Thessaloniki: The Plum Ride Finish Line, But Not Quite the End

Fun fact about me: in all three tours I’ve joined since starting at TDA, I’ve always been there at the beginning. I arrive with things from the office, meet the crew and riders, and share those first exciting days when the whole adventure is still ahead. But I’ve never experienced the other end of it.

What does it feel like to reach the finish after weeks on the road together? To share that enormous sense of accomplishment and camaraderie – mixed with the bittersweet realization that you did it, but will soon have to say goodbye to the people who became your little travelling world? Finishing a full tour with the riders and crew is one of my biggest dreams. And if I ever get to choose where it happens, I would love to cross that finish line in Thessaloniki on next year’s Plum Ride Cycling Tour.

The White Tower

Stay A Little Longer

But then comes another question: what do you actually do when the tour is over? Do you pack your bike, grab your bags and head straight to the airport? Or do you give yourself more than one day to recover, celebrate and enjoy one of Greece’s most underrated cities? I know what I would choose. I might even unpack the bike – although, after almost 3,500 kilometres, we would have to see how convincing I find that idea in real life. Thessaloniki isn’t a cycling capital, and its bike infrastructure is limited, so this isn’t the place to casually explore every neighbourhood on two wheels. The flat waterfront, however, is the exception: a roughly five-kilometre stretch connecting the port, White Tower and Concert Hall, passing the famous Umbrellas by the famous sculptor Giorgios Zoggolopoulos along the way. It sounds like the perfect easy ride for legs that have already done quite enough.

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Pedalling past the ‘Umbrellas’

More adventurous riders could look beyond the city towards the forested hills of Seyh Su or Mount Chortiatis but those are proper mountain-biking outings that would require some local route research, not spontaneous post-tour wandering.

Bike or no bike, I would stay for the food alone. This is Greece, after all. I would give myself a couple of gloriously unproductive days dedicated to tavernas, pastries, seafood and discovering exactly how many different things can be improved with feta and olive oil. I would simply wander around the Ladadika district and slip into a couple of tavernas without even checking Google reviews, just choosing whatever catches my eye.

Then I would switch on my history nerd mode. Thessaloniki offers several directions to take it! I could explore ancient Macedonia at the Archaeological Museum, dive into the city’s Byzantine past at the Museum of Byzantine Culture, or visit the Jewish Museum to understand Thessaloniki’s once-thriving Jewish community and what happened to it during the Holocaust. Different chapters of the same remarkably layered city – and knowing me, choosing just one might be the real challenge.

And if a couple of days somehow became a few more, Thessaloniki would also make a great base for exploring the region: ancient Pella, birthplace of Alexander the Great, or Litochoro and Mount Olympus. Climbing Olympus is not exactly a casual day trip – it deserves proper planning and, depending on the route, more than one day – but after cycling across Europe, perhaps one more mountain wouldn’t sound completely unreasonable.

Perhaps that is what I would want from Thessaloniki: not another achievement to add immediately after cycling through nine countries, but a little time to understand that the adventure is actually over. To sit by the sea, eat something ridiculously good, replay the past 45 days and slowly get used to the strange idea that tomorrow you won’t be getting back on the bike with the same people.

I still don’t know what finishing a tour feels like. But I imagine it is a confusing mixture of exhaustion, pride, relief and not being quite ready to let go. And Thessaloniki – with its waterfront, layers of history and very persuasive amounts of feta – seems like a pretty good place to stay with that feeling for a little longer.

Hopefully, one day I’ll find out for myself.

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