You know the walk across hot tarmac, the wave of heat that hits you that shows the Brits they are on holiday? I had that at Glasgow airport in our astonishing summer. When I arrived in Thessaloniki it was pelting with rain. It was after 10 at night and I had pre-ordered a taxi for my late arrival. The bloke who picked me up was a guide, who wanted to point out the beauties of Thessaloniki in the rain and darkness. Then he pulled up a screen on the dashboard and showed me pictures instead, taking both hands off the wheel to gesture his points. He was an agreeable fellow – most Greeks are – so I concealed my fear and asked interested questions.
It rained all night – too wet to walk around the streets near the hotel and find dinner – taxi to the bus station the next morning and bus to Kavala, a couple of hours away through a pleasant landscape of small holdings, olives and coast.
I was meeting my travel companion, TC, who was attending a tourism conference (she’s an academic). We had a little apartment for a few nights, up a steep hill. In the evening she went to the opening reception for the conference, and I to the waterfront for a meal. Thunder, lightning, the waiters running about drying to find dry seats and pulling the restaurant umbrellas around to give us shelter. It was so wet I took a taxi back to the apartment.

TC had meanwhile been addressed at the conference by the mayor, a woman who had made a very good speech – the municipality wants to encourage tourism in Kavala. Then they had an hour’s guided walk. In what would have been a ridiculed plot point in a comedy, the guided tour was pelted on with rain, everyone poking each other with umbrellas and the noise of the water from the sky and rushing in rivers down the streets so loud you couldn’t hear the guide.

I can see why the mayor sees It has possibilities. It has a population of around 50,000, is nicely situated on hills and by the sea, and has an interesting Ottoman old town including an eighteenth century merchant's house you can visit, with a beautiful panelled interior, and the sense of a life lived turned towards inside – women’s quarters set up so they never see the men. It was the house of Mehmet Ali, the founder of a dynasty that ruled Egypt up to Farouk.
Byzantine Castle
Imaret
View from castle
There are only a few souvenir shops, some selling attractive ceramics and olive wood spoons and bowls. We bought some sponges and the woman we bought them from pre-haggled – i.e. offered us bargains before she needed to. I assumed she had been on a haggling course and was keen to practice.
Ottoman houses
Kavala Museum suited me. It’s air-conditioned, on one floor, small, choice collection including some coloured busts of women, a style of artefact which I’ve never seen before. Only two visitors when I was there.

The finest structure is an aqueduct built under Suleyman the Magnificent. It is very grand.


You can have an outing to Thassos, an island nearby, with a history of pirates kidnapping the citizens and a monastery beautifully tended by grumpy nuns.
Archangel Michael Monastery
The most felt history is a memory of a 400 year occupation by the Turks.
Of course we were congratulating ourselves for staying somewhere not full of tourists, or at least not foreign ones, as the cafes were full of holidaying Greeks watching a noisy air show, and like all tourists we hoped that the place would not become too touristy. Greeks need the money though and if their resource is history, buildings, cheap drink and their people's agreeable manner, so be it.
Main square, Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki, where we stayed one night before heading to Bulgaria, was jam-packed and very hot. It has a brilliant Byzantine museum and a waterfront lined with busy cafes. Quite expensive compared to Kavala.