Why Thessaloniki needs a local guide
Greece's second city has better food than the first and the locals will fight you on this. The waterfront promenade runs 5km along the Thermaic Gulf. Ano Poli, the old upper town, still has Ottoman-era houses with wooden balconies and stray cats on every step.
Thessaloniki receives around 4 million visitors a year, and most of them stick to the White Tower, the waterfront, and a quick look at Aristotelous Square. They leave without ever climbing to Ano Poli where the Byzantine walls frame a view of the entire Thermaic Gulf. They never sit in a tsipouradiko in Ladadika where the meze plates keep arriving until you tell them to stop. To become a tour guide in Thessaloniki is to fix this. The city is Greece's food capital and that is not up for debate. The Kapani and Modiano markets sit side by side in the center, spilling over with olives, dried peppers, pastourma, and stacks of bougatsa fresh off the griddle. A guide who walks someone through those markets on a Saturday morning and explains the Sephardic, Ottoman, and Pontic Greek layers of the city's cooking is doing something no audioguide will ever match. If you want to become a tour guide in Thessaloniki, you need opinions. Which of the six bougatsa shops on Irakliou Street is actually the best? Where do students go for souvlaki at 3am after the Valaoritou Street bars close? Becoming a tour guide in Thessaloniki means being ready to argue about food with total strangers and enjoy every second of it.