Part 5: Discovering additional places of interest in the city
By John Thomsen
Thessaloniki has many places beyond the White Tower worth visiting. Areas like the assassination site of King George and Ano Poli are rich in history as well.
The next day, our final day in Thessaloniki, being determined to honor my Danish heritage, which goes back many hundreds of years, I asked my friends to help me to track down the square in which King George I of Greece, born a Danish prince in Copenhagen, had been assassinated in 1913.
Surprisingly to me, most Greeks are unfamiliar with King George I, King of the Hellenes, who lived in the center of Athens for nearly 50 years. He lived in what is now the Hellenic Parliament building. However, whether familiar with him or not, Greece can be extremely grateful to this Dane, because when he became King of Greece, the country was handed one of the greatest gifts ever given to any country. Greece was given, not one, not, two, but all the Ionian islands….Corfu, Zakynthos, Kefalonia, Kythera, Ithaca, Lefkada and Paxoi, some of the most lush and beautiful islands in Greece with unimaginably exquisite turquoise waters.
After a relatively short search, we found the small square where the king had been assassinated, and along with an excellent bust of King George I himself, there was a beautifully sculpted figure of his beloved wife, Queen Olga. Olga had been a Russian Grand Duchess, but before coming to Greece at the age of 16 to marry, she was told by the Tsar to “love her new country twice more than her own.” She arrived in Piraeus wearing a dress of blue and white, the national Greek colors. She was loved immediately by the Greek people and would become one of the most charitable queens in all of history.
We suddenly realized that the sun would set within an hour, so we headed back to the port to have our final dinner in this beautiful city while watching the sun dance across the waters. After a wonderful dinner we said a fond farewell to the port and headed back to the hotel to get a good night’s sleep and be ready to spend the last half-day in Upper Thessaloniki (Ano Poli). This is an amazing area above the main city that we hadn’t explored. Unfortunately, soon after arriving and taking in the dramatic vistas, the massive Byzantine fortification walls and a few of the fascinating older homes, the sprinkles that we had felt soon after arriving had turned into heavy rain.
Luckily, we spotted a kafenio nearby and ran to take cover. It was a wonderfully welcoming, old-fashioned place where we could sit back, relax, and share a sweet bougatsa (a favorite pastry in Macedonia) and small cups of perfectly brewed Greek coffee. As the rain ended, we had just enough time to find a taxi, get to the hotel, grab our bags, and head for a delightfully scenic train ride back to Athens…passing by Mt. Olympus, Mt. Parnassus, stopping at some delightful old train stations along the way, and before we realized it we were back in Athens.
There is of course much more to see in Thessaloniki, this beautiful city by the sea, so now with the city put into visual and historical perspective, I will very happily return with friends and continue exploring the cities many treasures….and of course, its many pleasures!