5 Days in Thessaloniki
Published · by ThessalonikiHub
The city as a base: three days in it and two trips out, without changing hotel.
In this guide5
With five days you stop being a visitor to Thessaloniki and become a visitor to Macedonia, with Thessaloniki as your base.
That is the city's advantage: everything worth seeing around it sits within an hour and a half, so you never have to change hotel every second night.
Days 1-3: the city
The three-day plan as it stands. The centre and the Roman-Byzantine monuments, the Upper Town and the walls, the sea and the museums.
If history is what pulls you, swap one afternoon for the Jewish or the Ottoman walk.
Day 4: Vergina
Vergina — ancient Aigai, the first capital of the Macedonian kingdom — is the trip that makes the rest of the week make sense. You have spent three days in a city founded by Kassandros in 315 BC and named after his wife, Alexander the Great's half-sister; this is where Alexander's father is buried.
The museum is built inside the burial mound itself, underground and dark, and is one of very few museums anywhere where the finds sit exactly where they were found.
Day 5: pick a landscape
The last trip is a question of mood and season:
- Mount Olympus, if you want a mountain. Litochoro is the base; you do not have to reach a summit to understand why they put the gods up there.
- Edessa, for waterfalls running through the middle of a town. The easiest with children.
- Chalkidiki, from May to September. Kassandra starts about 70-100 km from Thessaloniki.
- Meteora, if a long day does not put you off. It is the furthest of the five and needs an early start.
Why not to move base
The temptation at five days is to spend two nights in Chalkidiki. It usually is not worth it: you lose half a day to packing and driving, you pay for two check-ins, and two nights is not long enough for Chalkidiki to become a holiday.
Either stay in Thessaloniki and take day trips, or make it a separate trip. If you lean towards the second, there is a guide to combining the two.
Practical
- A car: with two day trips it now pays for itself. Rent it for days 4 and 5 rather than the whole week — in the centre you will be paying for something you are not using.
- Intercity buses: Vergina, Edessa and Chalkidiki are all served. Timetables change by season; check them the day before.
- Season: from November to March, cross Chalkidiki off the list. Most of it is shut, and a beach you cannot swim at is just a cold beach.
