Meteora to Kavala: Day 25 Topdeck Mega European Tour

This morning we were up early once again ready to continue on with the Topdeck Mega European Tour, this time we are travelling further north for our last night in Greece to the seaport town of Kavala. There isn’t a terrible lot to see or do here this is more of an overnight stop before we enter Turkey the following day so we can break the travelling time up.

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25 May, 2012 – Meteora to Kavala

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Today is another long trip on the coach as we head further north and start heading further east towards Turkey to check out Gallipoli and the famous Istanbul. Kavala is our port of call tonight and while there isn’t much to see here it is a nice seaside town great for a bit of a chill out before we face our four nights in Turkey.

We would be spending the next night at the Oceanis Hotel, on arrival to our hotel which was located only one block away from the beach/port many of us have now been deprived of clothes washing facilities for more than a week now and were desperate for some clean clothes. Close to the hotel is a laundry where most of us dumped our clothes and clearly paid highway robbery prices (silly tourists). However to get all our clothes washed for €25 was pretty steep but at the end of the day not too many of us cared as we now had fresh clothes for the next couple of days.

The main attraction in Kavala is the castle perched on top of the hill overlooking the entire town as well as the old Roman viaduct attached to the back of the castle. It’s a nice walk up to the top of the hill and you will need to pay an entry fee to get in, but for €1 for adults and €0.50 if you have a student card it’s not exactly going to break the bank. Even though I had a student card I wanted to pay the full price as I felt guilty. They really need to raise the price, there’s a start for getting out of economic trouble!

From the top of the castle it does provide impressive views of the town and surrounding area and you can also walk down the hill in a different direction which will take you past and under the viaduct.

One of our goals after checking out the castle was to exchange some Euros for Turkish Lira before crossing the border tomorrow. However with Greek banks closing at 2pm… Yes 2pm! And they wonder why the country is in trouble, there was nowhere to exchange money and apparently one bank refused to change money telling a group of girls on the tour that the Greeks don’t like the Turkish and won’t exchange it into their currency. Only in Greece…

After trying and failing to exchange currency we decided to sit by the beach at a bar to chill out, our tour leader Noddy and driver Deans walked past and we invited them over where we consumed a few beverages while we waited to be able to pick up our overpriced laundry. At least paying that much compensates for all the ridiculously low prices everywhere else. In fact this bar we were at wasn’t even interested in us paying for the second round of drinks.

Tonight was a relatively quiet night with not a lot going on in this town there was a new bar opening that night on the foreshore so a small group of us decided to check it out. The funny thing about going out at night is that we are always early, Europeans like to start their nights after midnight, we must have looked like pensioners trying to get the early bird special at 9pm.

There was also a small pop-up theme park near by so we also went and checked that out, but with not too many people around and it being very quiet it was an early night tonight. Tomorrow is a big day of border crossings, our first major one other than the United Kingdom to France and that seemed like an eternity ago.

Tomorrow our destination is the World War I historical site of Gallipoli, a very well known site to all us Australians and Kiwis on the trip and also a good lesson for the Canadians on our trip to learn about what went on here.

NEXT: Kavala to Gallipoli: Day 26 Topdeck Mega European Tour

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