The Odyssey Begins!

So, the odyssey actually began on Friday, when Catherine and I spent the day searching Athens for a tent.

"A tent?" I hear you saying.

Yes. A tent. We had decided to go camping.

Now, many people decided to take fall break as an oppurtunity to go to Egypt or Paris or Rome or Turkey or other cities in other countries. We did not do this. We decided that, since we were in Greece, we were going to see Greece, damnit. And, since we both had a lot of places that we wanted to go in Northern Greece, we decided that Northern Greece was where we would go.

In a tent.

Anyways, so we took the midnight train from Athens to Thessaloniki and ended up in that city at an early time of the morning, tired, dirty, and totally disoriented. Since nothing was actually open yet, we decided to wander our way down to the waterfront and imbibe some caffeine so that we might feel human again. Evidently, the most exciting landmark of the Thessaloniki waterfront is the White Tower, which is a tower which is not in fact white. They used to use it for executions and keeping prisoners and stuff.
There it is. By this point in time, Catharine and I had managed to be latched on to by a creepy man (a recurring theme on this whole trip) and so we decided to head inside the white tower, where there is a museum. Also, it was cold. And inside the tower, it was warm.
From the top of the tower there are some lovely views of Thessaloniki, which is generally a very ugly place. (We were there in the cold and the rain, so I'm not sure that we were there at the best time. However, the architecture seemed to be composed of the worst elements of Athenian architecture, and Athens has been described to me, multiple times, as the "ugliest capital city in all of Europe." So I'm pretty sure I'm not that far off in describing Thessaloniki as an ugly place.
It also has few landmarks of much note that we were too interested in seeing. It has a fabulous Byzantine museum (which I highly recommend, if you're ever in the area) a mediocre archaeology museum (not so highly recommended, though it's ok) a lot of churches, and the arch of Galerius.
Oh, look. There it is.