We drove around northern Greece this morning... gradually making our way to Bulgaria and the Balkans stage of our tour. The weather appeared similar to other days... a cold night with scattered cloud... not much wind... and a sunny day. But what had been a minor irritation during the previous week, shaped up as a major problem. Today, the air quality was atrocious!
We are in Greece, not the most industrialised countries around. When we were in Crete, the story was that high winds had picked up dust from the Sahara desert and dumped it on the islands. At the time, I bought that story... today, I think the problem may be more endemic. Hopefully, the air movements today have been unusual in trapping pollution close to a large mountain range. The people we have asked say that the quality is worse than usual, but cannot explain why today is so bad. The risk is that the day is fast approaching when Europeans will holiday in destinations that deliver clean air... I guess this is already happening to some extent. No one could enjoy the drive we had today with visibility limited to 5 klm and the colour drained from every scene. (Australian... keep your clean air!)
We drove past Mt. Olympus (or so our map indicated). The photo is shown below after the usual processing steps to clean up the air. Poor old Zeus, Apollo, Athena and the other good gods would be turning over in their graves at the lack of visibility from their lofty mountain over their beautiful country.
On the positive side, we are staying in a lovely country villa in the hills outside Thessaloniki... a hotel called Ktima Kalaitzi. Joye found the place off the web.... it is extra nice... an alpine feel... sitting isolated on a hill overlooking the regional centre of Vergina... magnificent setting... lovely hosts. The nearest town, Veria, where we had dinner, has a medieval Jewish quarter with unusual architecture... another lovely town just oozing history.
Lets hope the remaining three days in Greece meet the standards set by the previous three weeks... and that today was a 'once off' dud day.
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