We hadn’t originally planned to go to Greece but with the change of route to visit Kosovo and North Macedonia earlier it made sense to cross from the south of Albania into mainland Greece. We opted for Thessaloniki as a good point between Albania and Bulgaria. There wasn’t a great deal of information about getting between the two countries (unless you wanted to get the ferry from Sarandë to Corfu). I thought we may end up having to cross the border to a small town and then try and find an onward connection. I spotted a travel agency next to where the bus dropped us in Gjirokastër and as luck would happen they ran one bus a day to Thessaloniki at 6am so we booked ourselves onto that.
There was a guy to greet us in the morning who kept us up to date with when the bus was expected and it was all very smooth. We arrived quickly to the border and had to take all our luggage out before crossing into Greece. The border officials were physically searching everyone’s bags and when we arrived to them they asked if we’d got our stamp, asked where we were from and then just waved us on. I later found out that this was a popular route for local drug smuggling hence the checks and probably why we, as ‘foreigners’ were waved on.
We arrived into Thessaloniki around 4pm, the bus had emptied out by this point and it was us and one other person left on it! We dropped our luggage at our apartment and went for an orientation walk to get some supplies and just check out the city.
We spent our time in Thessaloniki exploring the ruins, checking out the famous white tower, the fortress (we just can’t get enough of them) and many churches. We also spent more time than we should have sheltering from a torrential storm in a church porch! We did something In Thessaloniki that we wouldn’t usually do, and that was pay for a nights accommodation that we didn’t use! We’d booked a night bus to Bulgaria that didn’t leave until 00.30 and we couldn’t face being homeless until midnight so we kept our accommodation and honestly, it was the best thing we did! If we were leaving that late again I’d do the same.
We knew we were due to reach the border of Bulgaria around 2am so we didn’t think there was much point trying to get any sleep before then. This was a very efficient border crossing, with the exit and entry windows actually being next to each other! The Bulgarian border guards were pretty tough though and wanted to know where we were staying, how long for and where we were going after that.
We eventually got a couple of hours sleep at around 5am when most people got off the bus at Sofia and I stretched right out, legs across the aisle! We met a really nice Greek guy on the bus who was off to Istanbul and insisted on feeding us lots of snacks.
We had another unexpected bus change and eventually arrived into Burgas at 12noon. We stepped off the bus and we’re greeted by the sound of air raid sirens. This was a little concerning to us and everyone around us stopped and stood still. We had arrived on 2nd June which is the day of Botev, who died for the freedom and independence of Bulgaria.
We had to walk to another bus station to catch a bus to Sozopol and I think i experienced a bit of a culture shock as we walked between the two stations as we were greeted by a completely different alphabet.
We went to Sozopol purely for the beach and it was nice to hear from a few people who when they found out where we were, said that they loved Sozopol! The beaches were sandy and it was great to have a bit of relaxation time and not do anything. One of the days was overcast and very windy but we used that day to check out the old town and catch up on a few things.
We had booked a 12noon bus to Istanbul from the nearby town of Burgas and we’d been trying to get some Turkish Lira in Sozopol to no avail. We changed our leftover Lev into Euros with the plan of trying to get some lira in Burgas. We left our bags at the bus company office and headed off to the exchange office and got what we needed, we headed quickly back to the bus station when we were shouted out by a Public Officer. He motioned for us to come to him and in broken English said ‘red man, no’ it turns out we’d broken the law by crossing the road on a red man! We had checked before crossing and it was clear, but we were obviously in the wrong. He had a colleague with him and we apologised profusely. He then demanded to see our documents so we had to hand over our passports! I was getting worried at this point, would we have to pay a fine or worse, would we have to go to the police station and potentially miss our bus? He glanced at our passports we said sorry again and promised not to do it again and thankfully he let us off. Definitely a lesson learnt there!
We arrived to the Turkish border and I think we were there for over two hours. We were behind a huge bus which had come from Ukraine and was full of women and children. It was noticeable how many vehicles at that border crossing were from Ukraine. I tried not to mind the delay too much knowing what they were fleeing. We had to have our bags x-rayed and they insisted on putting ours through twice. Mine passed second time but they were very interested in Joey’s and gave his a thorough search. They seemed to think that he had two cameras so we had to open up packing cubes to show that we didn’t. Unpacking and repacking your backpack at the border isn’t ideal and we were conscious that we were holding up everyone else on the bus! I really felt for Joey having to repack his backpack under pressure, with the incident in Burgas we were not having a good travel day!
We thankfully arrived into Istanbul without further incident and I had ticked off my 44th country before I am 44! When we were in India we came up with the idea of visiting 40 countries before we were 40 but Covid put paid to that so we set a new goal and I reached that with a year and a bit to go! I need a new goal now, 50 before 50 is probably too easy, as maybe 60 before 60 so maybe I need to aim for 80 before 80?!
Meandering Maxwells 
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