Using an eSIM in Thessaloniki

What Thessaloniki is like on a phone

Thessaloniki is Greece's second city and feels markedly unlike Athens. Most visitors come for the food, for the layers of different eras stacked in one place, or to use it as a base before Halkidiki. The city runs as a long strip along the bay and then climbs to an upper town still ringed by old walls. Along the waterfront and the main avenues it works well; the upper town, with its narrow lanes and old houses, feels different.

À l'atterrissage

Makedonia airport (SKG) lies south-east of the city, linked by bus and taxi, and the recently opened metro has changed how people move north to south through town. Long-distance trains use the main station west of the centre. Switch the eSIM on in the terminal, because you will be checking routes and messaging your accommodation. The ride in along the bay road keeps a good connection, open on one side with buildings only on the other.

Où la couverture change

The bay road that runs from the port down to the White Tower is the most open and best-connected line in the city, and the centre around Aristotelous Square is steady too. Up in the old upper town, on the hill among narrow lanes and two-storey houses, the pin drifts a little even where the signal is adequate. Inside the thick brick walls of the Rotunda and the older churches, the speed falls off clearly compared with the street. Metro platforms work.

What a day here costs in data

A Thessaloniki day spends its data on finding restaurants and booking tables — this is above all an eating city — plus the map on the climb to the upper town and reading up on ancient sites that stand mixed in among modern blocks. That comes to about a gigabyte a day. During the city's several annual festivals the density rises; check the dates with the organisers' own announcements, since they move from year to year.

Districts travellers ask about

• Ladadika — Old warehouses turned into restaurants and bars; the cobbled streets are narrow but shallow, and it holds up well even on a full night.
• Ano Poli — The upper town that survived the great fire, its lanes narrow and steep with a long view down over the bay; the open stretches along the old walls are the best-connected part of the quarter.
• Kalamaria — A seaside residential quarter to the south where locals walk in the evening; wide open streets keep it steadier than the centre at rush hour.
• The Rotunda and Navarinou — Where Roman remains surface in the middle of the student quarter; outside is fine, but inside the thick brick structures the speed drops enough that you should load what you need first.

Day trips out of the city

• Halkidiki — Three long peninsulas lined with beaches; the main roads keep a connection, while the small roads down to remote coves and out to the tips thin out in stretches.
• Mount Olympus and Litochoro — The village at the foot still has service, but once the trail goes into the deep gorge it drops out for long stretches; tell someone when you expect to be back before you set off.
• Vergina and Pella — Archaeological sites out on the western plain; the roads between are open and well served, but the museum built over the underground tombs has very little inside.