TRAVEL | WEEKLY WRAP UP | GREECE | MURALS

Completing Our Murals and Preparing To Move On

My Weeks in Photos – Weeks 49 & 50 – February 16 – March 1, 2023

It’s always bittersweet to finish our projects. On one hand, we are happy to complete more art that will bring happiness to people. But, on the other hand, we know it means that we are wrapping up our time and moving on.

As usual, we have made a few great friends and have built our hostel family over the past month and it’s always sad to say goodbye to them.

These past couple of weeks have had us mostly just working on our murals, visiting with our friends, and taking in some sights and sounds of Thessaloniki.

We have also been in preparation mode for the next leg of our journey which we are very excited about.

But let’s start at the beginning.

On February 16th, there was a huge festival in Thessaloniki. It was the start of Carnival and we didn’t know anything about it until we came downstairs to see our host cooking up a huge feast on the Bar-b-que.

“What is going on?” I asked.

“This is the biggest party night all year in Thessaloniki, everyone will be having bar-b-ques and celebrating in the streets tonight.” He told me.

I still don’t really understand the significance of the event, but it has to do with Carnival which is a big party in Europe and has some religious significance.

Funny, I thought that Carnival was a party only in Central and South America.

Either way, it’s always nice to find ourselves in a country that is celebrating in some sort of capacity.

Our host invited us to eat some of the food he was cooking, and we enjoyed some wine at the hostel before we decided that we better wander downtown to see what was going on.

We strolled around for a while and took in the festivities. The crowds were certainly out in full force and we did smell bar-b-ques cooking the whole way down to the waterfront.

Inside buildings and outside in the streets were people in costumes and musicians playing music. We even hung out and listened to some electronic music inside a huge warehouse that has been converted into a mall.

Check out a short 14-second video of one popular spot in the street here:

This week also brought some incredible sunsets. They were getting to be so nice that I figured that I should write a whole article about them:

Of course, our primary focus was on our mural work. We finished the one in a dorm room and we think it turned out great:

We also started and finished another project that the owner wanted us to work on. This project was in more of a public area, at the bottom of the stairs. It is our version of the White Tower which is a main landmark in Thessaloniki.

He was also very happy with how this turned out and we really brightened up an area that was quite dark and lifeless.

In one of the rooms, the owner had also painted his own artwork on the wall. At some point during our stay, he said that we could fix it if we wanted to as he wasn’t completely happy with it.

So one day we went in there, brushes in hand and just tried to clean it up a bit and give it a finishing touch. Chris did the lines around the buildings, and I did the blobs in the sky. It’s an interesting collaboration from all three of us I think.

I was also asked to paint a table that is outside in the courtyard area. He gave me full creative license to come up with something that looked good with the chairs that had already been painted with bright pastel colors.

I decided on a fun and random pattern that I think really made the corner fun and inviting. The owner says that he has plans to build out the benches along the wall and will get cushion fabric that matches the pastel color scheme.

We also had the opportunity to go on a couple of excursions to different points in the city these past couple of weeks. Our host had recommended that we check out a place called Ergon Agora. It is an eatery that is attached to a huge supermarket. It seemed to be a specialty market, sort of like Whole Foods, but the prices didn’t seem to be too much different than other stores, which was nice.

We had a nice selection of olives, some bread with spicy feta cheese and garlic spread plus a variety of sausages. I should mention that the bread was an in-store baked sourdough.

Delicious!

Mostly we went there to sit by the water and check out the sunset since they had been so nice recently. Sadly, this one wasn’t as nice as the ones we had been seeing, but the Aegean Sea was so calm and peaceful and it was a beautiful night.

We also managed to stumble upon the fish market one day while we were wandering around aimlessly. It was a Saturday and we were told that it was the best day to see the biggest selection.

Some of the shrimps you see in the first photo were 5" (12cm) long! They were very impressive.

I’ll conclude this post with photos of the complete hostel crew. The two cats are strays but regulars around there as the volunteers feed them regularly. The grey one on the left is known as the District Manager.

And this is most of the crew that became our hostel family for the month that we stayed at Arabas Hostel. As you can see, our friend Dawoud in the front is quite the character. Apparently, he stole all the tip money from the previous volunteer crew to have that picture of himself printed and framed. He was very proud of himself and we were reminded frequently that he was, indeed, the Volunteer of the Year.

As I said at the beginning of this post, leaving our hostel family is usually the hardest part of moving on. We always make fun connections and really enjoy meeting people from all parts of the world.

As we packed up I couldn’t help but reflect on what a nice month we had in Thessaloniki. It was a place that we may never have chosen to go to, but the Universe clearly had other plans for us.

How lucky we are to have been guided to another beautiful corner of the world.

My next weekly wrap-up will probably really surprise some of you as we are off on another big adventure! I won’t spill the beans yet, but stay tuned to see where we end up.

I can promise you that it is very unexpected!

I hope everyone has had a great couple of weeks!

xo Jill and Chris

Stories written in the past couple of weeks:

What Scared Us the Most About Traveling In Sudan

They Say I’ve Been To 52 Countries

Painting a Realistic Crumbling Brick Wall

G is For Greece — My A-Z of Favorite Travel Destinations

It’s Been One Year Since I Broke Up With Facebook

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