Thessaloniki

With a few hours to kill, I made my way out of the terminal and got a taxi into Thessaloniki. The SKG airport is tiny with a few coffee shops, but it's definitely not somewhere you want to have to spend a lot of time at.

My friendly taxi driver spoke great English and gave me a great overview of the history of Thessaloniki. It's quite an intellectual place with great universities and lots of history being in northern Greece. He dropped me off along the waterfront so I could walk along it.

Past Aristotle square.

And onto a pier to get a coffee and do a little work before heading to lunch.

Such amazing views, I could spend hours here.

Well hello trireme, I haven't seen one of you since I played Age of Empires about two decades ago!

A nice iced coffee and some cookies that came with it.

With that, it was time to figure out what to have for lunch and I wandered through some of the waterfront areas that had tons of tavernas.

Too many choices.

I ended up choosing Mamalouka which had a great vibe and reviews looked positive.

I grabbed a seat inside so I wasn't directly in the sun and could enjoy the vibes.

They did a great job making the environment classic, yet modern and welcoming.

The menu was extensive.

But even cooler was a smaller meze size so I could try more dishes.

I started off with a dry Greek wine that seemed Sauv Blanc in style. Also a great presentation of breads.

Then a fantastic selection of dishes to try.

Starting with the lamb wrapped in phyllo egg-rolls. They were incredibly delicious!

Then the grilled octopus was probably my favorite, it was tender yet had the snappiness it should and a subtle grill char flavor.

Then taramasalata, a roe based spread that was super tasty.

Grilled calamari that was also great, just not as great as the octopus.

And the best Greek salad I've had in years, so fresh, simple and pure in flavor. Everything was light, flavorful, fresh and just perfect.

I wanted to skip dessert, but the staff loved how engaged I was and brought me a honey frozen yogurt and crispy wafer along with a glass of mastic liqueur.

I then noticed I had 20-minutes until boarding and the ride to the airport is 20-minutes without traffic. Oops, good thing MrsFlamingo isn't here, she'd be less than impressed.

A better view of the Aristotle square and onwards to SKG.

Thessaloniki was great, beautiful along the waterfront with lots of history and so many great tavernas to choose from. I'm glad I did this detour and definitely want to come spend two or three days exploring more of the history behind this city.

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