Northern Greece
We’d initially thought the northern Greece section would include a focus on Macedonia and Alexander the Great as well as Mount Olympus. When we learned that our Greek-American friends would be staying at their home in Gavalou, however, we happily ditched those topics in favor of a weekend of local Greek life. (For what it’s worth, simply driving the A2 east to west across northern Greece is in itself a moderate exploration of Macedonia, Epirus, and Molossia; it would not have been trivial at all for Alexander’s mom Olympias to travel from Molossia to Pella for her wedding!)
We began by flying into Thessaloniki. After a couple of nights in an apartment to recover from jet lag, we drove to Gavalou, where we enjoyed endless local hospitality and local folk-dancing and folk-singing festivals.
When our friends left the village to head back to Athens and home, we had a day to spare before beginning our first hike, so headed back north to spend a night in Meteora.
From Meteora, we drove across Thessaly to Magnesia and the Pelion peninusula, where we did the Mount Pelion hike.
We spent our last few days up north in Kamena Vourla, where we had a great view of the Malian Gulf, Euboiea, and the landscapes of both the battles of Artemesia and Thermopylae.
And that was northern Greece!