After a 23 hours trip with the bus (yes, we’ve been there with a bus, not an airplane or a personal car 🙂 ) we finally arrived to Halkidiki. For the ones who plan to come to Greece with the bus or with a car, you should definitely check the traffic before. Maybe use Waze or anything else that tells you how bad the traffic is from Bulgaria to Greece. You can see in the next picture how many cars were in line to cross the border. It took us around 1.5 hours.
Polychrono
Anyway, here we are, Polychrono, Halkidiki, on the Kassandra “finger”, the first (from west to east) of the three “fingers”. The others are Sithonia and Athos, and we will talk about Sithonia later.
On the first impression what you can see about this town is that was not made for late night parties and lots of fun, but more for relaxation. We would say that the average age of the tourists is above 40, the music is not loud anywhere and all the streets are very clean. If you want to chill and enjoy the sun and the Aegean Sea, this might be a great place for you.
One thing you SHOULD bring with you is a pair of water shoes. Our host told us from start that in the sea there are hedgehogs and they can really ruin your vacation.
Our next step was to search a car rental, to get ready for exploring Halkidiki. The local car rental places we’ve found were NOT accepting credit cards for either payment or deposit (around 200 Euros a small car for 6 days and another 200 Euros for deposit). So we turned to our tourism agent that helped us. For around 240 Euros (yes, cash again) we’ve got an almost new Fiat Panda, automatic. But hey, no deposit !!! Now we were ready to get lost in Halkidiki.
Before we move forward to other places, we can mention that the food is pretty good here in Polychrono, at the local taverns, and not very expensive. You can eat with 10 to maybe 15 Euros a meal. But be aware, beside the prices you will see in the menu, you will pay 1 – 1.5 Euros for each person, for the table. We are not sure what that means, it was not very clear because the stuff did not spoke English very good, but it’s some kind of service fee. Also you can eat at a nice restaurant called Flegra Tavern, where they have some talking parrots and the guy that owns them puts out quite a show. They know how to dance, kiss between them and even kiss you!
Kassandra “finger”
If you love sweets this is the place for you. Not far from Polychrono, in a town named Kallithea, you will find a cake shop with some amazing sweets. 15 Euros are enough for two people to fill out their bellies. Is somewhere on the road to Salonic, named Lemonis Bakery.
Having a car in this area is a great advantage in our opinion. You can go explore the hills south of Polychrono, where you can admire some fantastic views and the ride is not so long (around 2 hours).
Snorkeling, have you tried it? You can do that here. We bought the equipment for 10 Euros and went to Kriopigi beach. The water is very clear and some small fishes wait for you to discover them.
On this beach we also took a sofa ride on the sea for around 20 Euros each. If you like this kind of activity you can try it, we had a pretty good time.
If you want a fancy and great dinner, you can search for Sani Resort. It’s a great place and they have some restaurants with food from different countries. We chose the Italian one. You must know that the food will not be cheap, a Margherita Pizza was around 25 Euros, but it has a good taste, the place is relaxing and it also has a great view. Right next to those restaurants you can see the yachts taking a break in the harbor.
Sithonia “finger”
This area is wilder and more “natural” than Kassandra we would say. There are fewer towns but more nature that you can enjoy here.
When on the road, you should always watch for places where you can take a short driving break on top of the hills. Sithonia is filled with this kind of places where the views can surprise you, from watching the sea and sky, to house roofs or even Athos mountain somewhere far away.
We went to a little harbor, Porto Koufo, where you can enjoy the view of the sea surrounded by some hills or even rent a boat. The price for a motor boat was around 50 Euros for one hour, but we have chosen to just enjoy a walk on the shore.
Last but not the least, Palatania beach. With a parking place right next to it, you can see from afar the nice, blue water and the great sand in the sunlight. Perfect Greek image. But that’s not all. Besides water and sand you can see, to the other shore, the Athos mountain rising from the sea.
We did not get closer to Athos and the last “finger” of Halkidiki because women are not allowed there and men need to schedule their visit and receive a spot.
About the food in Sithonia we don’t have much to say, we ate only once. We paid around 5 Euros for a Gyros at a local tavern, but we liked more the food in Kassandra.
Northern Halkidiki
We visited the capital of Halkidiki, Polygyros. It was a strange feeling entering this town because we saw very few people. Maybe they were gone to the sea side or maybe was not the right time to visit, but it was kind of spooky at first sight. However, the few people that we’ve met were extremely kind (like most of the Greeks, let’s face it). We took a relaxing walk through the park next to the Archaeological Museum, a quite nice place to enjoy an evening walk. After that we had dinner at Tiverious Cafe Bar in the same park. Maybe it’s a little expensive then the rest of Halkidiki, around 20 Euros each person, but the food is amazing. Our favorite was some kind of grilled mushrooms.
Do you like caves? They have a great one in Halkidiki and it’s called Petralona. We learned that they found here the oldest evidence of human presence in the Balcans, dating some 270 000 years ago, one of the oldest in Europe. If you plan to visit know that you will also have a guide that will share some interesting information about the cave. Next to Petralona we found a small museum on the same topic, surrounded by a small park with statues of extinct animals. We loved the whole complex and we strongly recommend to visit. Worth mentioning is that the parking place is not near the cave. That is a restricted area. You will park the car not far from the main road and a little train will come to take you from there.
Our last stop in Halkidiki is Waterland. Waterparks is one of our favorite vacation activities so we could not miss the chance to check out one in this part of Greece. To be honest, we were not very impressed. It’s nice, but we’ve seen better. The attractions for adults are fun to try, but few compared to other Waterparks. But we can admit, is great for a walk. Waterland looks very much as a park, with lots of trees, alleys and benches. In the middle you have a restaurant or more a fast food where you can eat something but we did not enjoy the food so much.
That’s all for Halkidiki, thanks for reading, if you reached so far 🙂 . You can check the full image gallery here on Facebook and we will move on to our next destination and our next entry in the journal, Thessaloniki.