Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Leskhi Filon Perivalondos
Tsardháki
T
24670 26300.
The café of the Friends of the Environment is a great spot
for a drink, as it affords fine views of the northeastern
lakeshore from its vantage point up near Profítis Ilías.
Daily
noon-midnight.
Sanies
Orestiádhos 79
T
693 65 68.
Pleasant,
unpretentious taverna that offers tasty fish, such as trout
for €10, as well as a range of meat, salads and vegetable
dishes.
Daily noon-1am.
Ta Ladhokolla
Megálou Aléxandhrou 125
T
24670
29659.
As the name suggests, this restaurant follows the
recent trend of serving meat and fish dishes on greaseproof
paper for under €10.
Best of the southern lakefront
establishments.
Daily 11am-midnight.
Halkidhikí
HALKIDHIKÍ
begins at a perforated edge of shallow lakes east of Thessaloníki, then
extends into three prongs of land - Kassándhra, Sithonía and Athos - trailing like
tentacles into the northern Aegean Sea.
Kassándhra
and
Sithonía
host some of the
busiest holiday resorts in Greece, drawing hordes from Thessaloníki and other parts of
the north, as well as increasing numbers from eastern Europe. The beaches themselves
consist of white sand, ranging in consistency from powder to coarse-grained.
Mount Athos
, the easternmost peninsula, is in all ways separate, a “Holy Mountain”
whose monastic population, semi-autonomous within the Greek state,
excludes all
females
- even as visitors. The most that women can do is to glimpse the buildings
from offshore cruise
kaïkia
sailing from the two small resorts on the periphery of the
peninsula - Ierissós and Ouranoúpoli - on the “secular” part of the Athos peninsula.
ARRIVAL AND INFORMATION
4
HALKIDHIKÍ
By car
Both Kassándhra and Sithonía are connected to
Thessaloníki by a four-lane expressway which ends at Néa
Moudhaniá, a dull town and minor passenger port, from
where a network of fast two-lane roads extends around
their coastlines.
By bus
Buses run frequently to all the larger resorts. In
spite of this, neither peninsula is that easy to travel around
if you are dependent on public transport. You really have to
pick a place and stay there, perhaps renting a
motorbike or
car for excursions.
Useful website
W
halkidiki.com
Kassándhra
Vaguely boot-shaped
KASSÁNDHRA
, the nearest of Halkidhikí's three peninsulas to
Thessaloníki, is also by far the most developed and its appearance has been done no
favours by the extensive 2006 fires that decimated almost the entire forest once
covering the central section of its spine. Most of the attractive inland villages date from
the mid-nineteenth century, as the earlier ones were left deserted after their inhabitants
were massacred during the 1821 War of Independence. On the coast, there were only a
few small fishing hamlets here until after 1923, when the peninsula was resettled by
refugees from around the Sea of Marmara - these have since burgeoned into holiday
venues. Many travellers choose to bypass Kassándhra and keep going to Sithonía or the
top end of Athos.
MACEDONIAN CAVEMEN
Fifty kilometres southeast of Thessaloníki, en route to the Kassándhra peninsula, and set
among handsome mountain scenery, is the cave of
Kókkines Pétres
(daily 9am-5pm; guided
tours only €7;
T
23730 71671). The name means “Red Stones”, and they were discovered in
1959 by villagers from nearby Petrálona
looking for water. Besides an impressive display of
stalagmites and stalactites, the villagers - and, later, academics - found the fossilized remains
of prehistoric animals and, most dramatic of all, a
Neanderthal skull
, all of which are
displayed in a decent museum near the cave entrance. No photography is allowed, but there is
a small museum and onsite café.
