Thessaloniki/Golden Star Resort

There's not much I can say about Thessaloniki. It's now another one of those places that i've "been" to, but never actually been to. A few years ago after a fantastically destructive week and a half on Mykonos, I had my first run in with SKG. A buddy and I were on the same flights from JMK through SKG to Paris. Due to the Greek nature of things, the flight out of JMK was massively delayed and by the time we landed at SKG, it was after our scheduled departure for Paris. We were already well into researching hotels and bars in Thessaloniki as the plane taxied to a stop. Luckily (I guess) the SKG-CDG flight was ALSO massively delayed, so we were able to make our connection and continue as planned.

This time was to be a slightly longer, but no more eventful stop. The A3 flight in from Moscow landed after 9pm, and we had a flight out to Crete shortly after 6am the following morning.

As such, I booked a place that looked close to the airport and reasonably comfortable, The Golden Star.

SKG was pretty well done for the day by the time we landed, but as were coming from Russia, we had to queue up for an immigration nightmare line. Once through that, we hopped into a cab and set off for the hotel. It was a serious rip off of about 20euro for the 12-15 minute drive to the hotel. Check-in was quick, the hotel seemed to be near the seaside and I assume was in a busy area, it looked like there were restaurants and bars in the vicinity. I just wanted to sleep, I was dreading the 4:45am alarm from the moment we landed in Greece.

The desk clerk gave us a key, and as soon as we entered room 101, the smell was unbearable. In an earlier portion of this summer report (June), I discussed a bio hazard smell coming from the toilet of a room I was shown at the St. Regis in Moscow...this was every bit as bad. A serious war crime. We called the desk and he told us to come fetch a key for a new room.

The hotel was everything I expected for $80-90 USD/night. The aircon was strong, the bed was a King, it was clean and I passed out quickly after we settled into the new, non-smelly room.

One of these days I will go to Thessaloniki and actually GO there. I've heard it's nice.