Having seen enough of Greek driving so far, we decided against parking in the city and went back to our old habit of finding a train station to camp in, with added bonus of Eddie entertainment in the morning as he watches the trains!
In an unusually faff-free manner, we were up and out of the van in time for the 9am train, thinking maybe we’d struggle to fill the whole day… which of course turned out not to be a problem!
We started out explorations by wandering along the waterfront from the train station to the ‘White tower’, cheerfully repainted after its past as a notorious prison and site of mass executions. Eddie once again enjoyed the sport of pigeon chasing and the many many steps.
From there we wound our way through the town via the rotunda, initially planned as a mausoleum then turned church to mosque to church again and now museum, with some really interesting info signs on the greek-turkish population exchanges and wars in Asia minor which by some miracle Eddie actually allowed us to read.
Refuelled with gyros, pastries and a couple of beers at a park near the rotunda, we pootled on to the upper town to see the remnants of the Byzantine walls. We climbed another tower that had once provided a corner of them to make the most of incredible views across the rest of the city.
Wandering back towards the city centre we found a taverna on the hill with views too good to miss and stopped there for some mezze we hadn’t tried yet (getting harder to find!) And some wine, committing us to the decision to spend another night in the station car park!
We found the Roman Forum on our way back and admired it before just about managing to get on the 8.30pm train- and we could have spent longer! Cafe culture is strong and very time consuming…
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