Day 25 Thessaloniki

Our Greek vocabulary is growing at about two words a week but we expect it will be like the Swahili words we picked up in Africa from which the only word we can now remember is Muzungu (white person). We started with efharisto (thank you), which apparently we say way too much and the Greeks find it annoying, its not necessary to thank your waiter for bringing a drink, a nod will do. Then we learnt kalimera and kalispera (good morning and good afternoon, although their afternoon starts much later than ours) we then moved on to ne for yes,(that sounds confusingly like nay), yassas (hi, is used a lot as a greeting), yamas (cheers) and paracolo (you're welcome, said to us a lot).

We join the free walking tour of Thessaloniki that goes from 10 - 12, there's not much walking but we hear plenty of historic stories and myths as we see the main highlights of the city centre, We also realise that we often see black gowned priests with long white beards walking around the streets but we are yet to see any nuns. 

After a walk along the promenade past the historical white tower we decide to do something quite out of character and we get on a cheesy pirate boat for a 30 minute cruise of the bay. The cruise is "free" providing you buy a drink on board, the drinks are only about €3 more than in the bars and it is now very hot so we decide to take some time out and chill on the boat for a while. Our pirate ship comes complete with a pirate decked out in jewellery and a large skull and bones flag to wave from the bow while ringing a large brass bell to attract other tourists. The music on board is the same music we have heard everywhere across Greece, 1980's pop, it seems that Greece has been musically stuck in a time warp, on the plus side we know all the words which is not something we can say about contemporary pop.

While eating dinner about 8.30pm the skies darken as they did at the same time last night and we watch as parents hurriedly gather up their children from playing and rush them home before the nightly thunderstorm starts, its a good line to have, "you can play outside until the rain starts then we have to go home".