Thessaloniki

Okay, Cheri and Hans-Jörg. Here are the long-promised highlights of our trip to Greece in February 2016, just in time to provide a few tips for your visit this month. More photos than text, as usual, since I'm not getting more ambitious as I approach seventy: this is the quick, bare-bones approach.

First some scenes you'll encounter simply by wandering around the city:

The White Tower 

 Mount Olympus in background.

Some of the treats in store for you at the fabulous Archaeological Museum:

From a special exhibition on modern migration, reminiscent of narratives in Victoria Hislop's TheThread:

The Museum of Byzantine Culture:

The Jewish Museum, where we did not take photos, is a wonderful testament to the enduring culture of Sephardic Jews, who fled to Greece from Ferdinand and Isabella's Spain, struggled and thrived, only to find themselves in the twentieth century confronting Nazi occupation. Here are a few pictures gathered on the internet (mostly from TripAdvisor): 

The museum is housed in one of the few Jewish buildings that survived the great fire of 1917, formerly owned by both the Bank of Athens and a Jewish newspaper publisher.

I also have no photos from the spectacular site at the tomb of Phillip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. This unique tumulus museum is in Vergina, about an hour and a half outside of Thessaloniki. As I've said before, you really mustn't leave without seeing this. Truly extraordinary. The  website gives you a good sampling of the treasures on display but can't, of course, capture the magic of the up-close-and-personal experience.

https://www.aigai.gr/en/explore/museum/royal/grave/of/philip/aiges/vergina

That's it. Enjoy! See you on the 25th.

PS  While you won't be visiting this refugee camp outside Thessaloniki, it is a sad signifier of contemporary events. Poor Syria. Poor Greece, trying to cope with the people whom countries like the UK (and Trump's US, of course), in contrast to Germany, refuse to help.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/06/prisoners-of-europe-the-everyday-humiliation-of-refugees-stuck-in-greece-migration