A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki leaves the coast for the hot springs of Pozar and the waterfall city of Edessa in northern Greece. For other days out, see our tours in Greece page.
This page covers what the trip includes, the length of the road, the baths and their warm water, Edessa and its waterfalls, its history, Mount Voras, the countryside on the way and the questions travellers ask.
What does a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki include?
A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki starts at 8 in the morning, says one operator. The day has a drive to the hot springs, time to bathe, lunch in a village, and the Edessa waterfalls.
The operator names the meeting point as Aristotelous Square and Egnatia Street, in front of the statue of Eleftherios Venizelos. This Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki wants guests at the spot 10 minutes before departure. The page also stresses being punctual at every meeting time. The highlights name Mount Voras and Varosi.
A second listing of that tour adds air conditioning in the vehicle and an English-speaking escort. It says the bus cannot wait at the stops, except for boarding. The page says people of every physical fitness level can join. It marks the tour as not recommended for people with poor cardiovascular health.
The operator’s included list for the Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki names round-trip transport. It adds a trip attendant, an archaeologist who speaks English, plus a walking tour of Varosi. Lunch at the restaurant is not included. The page does not allow pregnant women in the hot springs. Guests under 15 need an adult beside them.
The second listing fills in the middle of the day. It describes lunch in a village next to Pozar and a visit to the local market. At Edessa it gives free time at the waterfalls. It adds a walk through Varosi, with a visit to the Water Museum as one choice.
A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki also comes as a private transfer. One transfer company lists two vehicles. A car takes one to four passengers, and a minivan takes five to eight. The page names Orma, Varosi, and local treats such as honey and spoon sweets. It also says the driver can add short stops.
How long is the road from Thessaloniki to Pozar and Edessa?
The pages for a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki do not agree on the road. One listing gives 110 km and roughly one and a half hours of driving to Pozar. The operator’s own itinerary lists two hours.
The operator’s own itinerary for the Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki has five stages. It lists a two-hour drive to Pozar, then free time at the hot springs for two and a half hours. Lunch in Orma is set for 90 minutes.
The Edessa waterfalls and Varosi stop lasts one and a half hours, and the drive back lasts two hours. The second listing of the Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki differs on the return. It has the group leave Edessa at around 3 in the afternoon and arrive back at half past 4.
One transfer company lists a round trip of 228 km with a duration of eight hours. Its private car option splits that into four hours on the road and four hours of waiting time. Its flexible option lets the passenger set the waiting time, with a minimum of one hour.
Start times differ too. The operator’s meeting time is 8 in the morning. One transfer company says its driver comes to the passenger’s door. The time is 9 in the morning or another time of choice.
One website about the waterfalls puts the baths about 100 km northwest of Thessaloniki. It says the baths and the waterfalls lie 65 km apart. It gives the drive between the two sites as roughly one hour. For this Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki, sources give 100 km or 110 km.
What are the Pozar thermal baths?
Natural hot springs in Macedonia, Greece, make up the Pozar thermal baths. Wikipedia places them 13 km west of Aridaia. They lie 32 km north of Edessa, it adds. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki pairs these baths with the city of Edessa.
The baths on a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki sit in the municipality of Almopia. That municipality belongs to the Pella regional unit, and Aridaia is its seat. A regional tourism website gives the spa town’s distance to Loutraki as 3 km. Wikipedia says that village was once called Káto Pózar.
The name Pozar has more than one reading in the sources. One regional page says the word means ember or burning coal. One operator page offers two explanations, “after the charcoal” and “under the fire”.
One tourism website describes a green setting with plane trees and waterfalls. Tile-paved paths and wooden bridges help visitors follow the mountain paths to a complex of 16 caves. A regional website counts about 15 caves. It says the area is a declared cave park, the first of that kind in Greece.
The pools at the baths on a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki are built or natural. One Greek tourism page lists built pools of 3 by 3 metres at 37 degrees Celsius. It also names ponds shaped naturally in the bank of the hot river.
Wikipedia calls the baths popular with tourists in the cooler months. A hot-springs website says the springs are accessible year-round. One travel page pictures a mid-winter soak with snow close by. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki therefore pairs a year-round spring with a waterfall city.
Why is the water at Pozar warm?
The water at Pozar is warm because it sinks deep into the ground, heats and rises again, one operator says. Wikipedia gives the baths a natural 37 degrees Celsius. That heat is why a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki stops at hot springs.
Wikipedia defines a hot spring as a spring produced by geothermally heated groundwater that reaches the surface. Shallow bodies of magma can heat that water. So can circulation through faults to hot rock deep in the crust. Even without volcanic activity, rock grows hotter with depth, a rate called the geothermal gradient.
The heat behind a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki starts deep underground. The sources do not name the exact rock or fault. A travel page on Greek hot springs in general says rainwater seeps down through limestone. It meets much hotter rock far below. Fissures then force it back up.
A regional tourism website gives three Pozar figures. The main spring at the hydrotherapy centre is 37.2 degrees Celsius. The spring in the square is 36.4 degrees, and a cold spring in the same square is 15 degrees. One operator says the stream’s old name, Toplitsa, means “the hot river” in a Slavic language.
Sources differ on the minerals in the water of a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki. One hot-springs website names potassium, sodium, manganese, magnesium, silicon, fluoride, iron and lithium. Another source lists calcium, magnesium and potassium among its ingredients. A regional website says visitors use the water for bath therapy, toning and relaxation.
Wikipedia on balneotherapy says studies do not show that bathing treats rheumatoid arthritis. It adds that heart disease and pregnancy can cause serious adverse effects, so a physician is asked first. One operator lists a rule for its Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki. The rule keeps pregnant women out of the hot springs.
What is Edessa, the city of waters?
Edessa lies in the north of Greece and is the capital town of Pella, a regional unit of Central Macedonia. Its Greek name means “tower in the water”. Two operators list it after the hot springs on a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki.
One operator explains that the name fits because water has shaped the city since antiquity. The Slavic name Vodena, from the Slavic word for water, was the common name until the twentieth century. On a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki, the name points to the main sight, falling water.
The town lies at an elevation of 320 metres, Wikipedia gives. A local government reform merged two former municipalities, Edessa and Vegoritida, into one municipality of 611.212 square kilometres. The page on the Pella regional unit lists Edessa with 19,036 inhabitants. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki visits the capital of that unit.
Wikipedia says services and tourism carry the local economy. Visitors come for the waterfalls, the winter sports and ancient Pella nearby. Edessa railway station is on the Thessaloniki-Bitola railway and is served by Line 2 of the Thessaloniki Regional Railway. Wikipedia lists the Folklore Museum of Edessa and the Edessa Ecclesiastical Museum.
Varosi is the old neighbourhood of Edessa, as Wikivoyage puts it. Two operators list a walking tour there, and one adds a visit to the Water Museum. One operator lists an hour and a half in Edessa. That is its plan for a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki.
What are the Edessa waterfalls?
There are twelve waterfalls in the area of Edessa, and four are easy to see. Wikipedia calls them the main attraction for visitors to the city. Operators of a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki list them as a stop.
The falls on a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki are a natural phenomenon. Wikipedia says they arose after a strong earthquake in the fourteenth century, and smaller earthquakes have since changed their shape.
The main source is the wetland of Agra-Nissiou, from which the river Edessaios flows. The falls are branches of that river. One operator says the water comes from springs on Mount Kaimaktsalan, fed by snowmelt, so the sources differ.
The Geopark of the Falls covers over 100,000 square metres, and a rock path runs for 1.1 kilometres. The paths include a stone-paved way to ancient Edessa through the plain of the city. Until the early twentieth century, this way was part of the ancient Egnatia road linking Edessa and Thessaloniki.
Wikivoyage says the park lies near the railway station and visitors can pass below the main waterfall. One waterfalls site lists a cave passage behind the main falls and a paved trail to the lower basin. One operator of a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki lists free time at the waterfalls.
Late in the nineteenth century, factories rose on the rock to use the falls for electricity. Wikipedia lists five large textile factories there, each using one fall. After World War II gardens and paths were built, and the works ended in nineteen fifty-three. Since two thousand three, the falls are lit in rainbow colours at night.
One waterfalls site gives the drop as 70 metres over a travertine cliff. It says the falls freeze in part in January and February. It adds that they run strongest in late spring, when snowmelt feeds the river. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki therefore meets different scenes in different months.
What is the history of Edessa?
Certain ancient writers, Wikipedia reports, credit Caranus with founding Edessa, the earliest capital of ancient Macedon. The city later passed through Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman hands. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki visits that old city.
Wikipedia says Caranus was the legendary founder of the Argead Dynasty, which included Alexander the Great. Later Argead rulers moved the capital to Aegae and finally to Pella. Wikipedia’s Aigai article adds that Aigai was historically placed at Edessa, until the finds at Vergina.
Remains of ancient Edessa lie just below the modern city. A Roman-era colonnade carries an inscription in Greek. The city stood on the Via Egnatia and had its own mint from twenty-seven B.C. to two hundred sixty-eight A.D. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki reaches that same town.
Wikipedia says Saint Vassa and her three children were put to death in Edessa in the third century A.D. Under the Byzantine Empire, the city controlled the Via Egnatia where it enters the Pindus mountains. It became a centre of medieval Greek culture, known for strong walls and fortifications.
The Normans captured Edessa briefly in ten eighty-three, and the Serbs secured it in thirteen fifty-one. The Ottoman commander Evrenos Bey conquered it in the late fourteenth century. So a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki reaches a town that changed hands more than once.
After almost five hundred years of Ottoman rule, Greece annexed Edessa in October nineteen twelve. In nineteen forty-four the Nazis set the town on fire, and half of it was destroyed. Today the economy rests on services and tourism. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki adds to that tourism.
What is Mount Voras, the mountain above Pozar?
Wikipedia calls Kaimaktsalan, also known as Voras, a mountain that Greece shares with North Macedonia. Its range also holds the hot springs at Pozar on the Greek side. That ties the mountain to a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki.
Wikipedia gives the peak a height of 2,521 metres. It is the highest summit of the Voras Mountains and sits at their southern end. Only Mytikas and Smolikas stand higher in Greece. The frontier between the two countries runs across the summit. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki stays on the Greek side of that frontier.
Kaimaktsalan is an Ottoman Turkish word meaning “like kaymak”. Kaymak is a Turkish dairy product similar to clotted cream, and the name was inspired by the white, snowy peak. The peak consists of granite, gneiss and mica. Summers are short and cool there, and winters are long and cold.
In September nineteen sixteen, the Battle of Kaymakchalan took place at the summit and around the adjacent peaks. Serbian and Bulgarian troops fought, and the Serbs won. A small church and crypt are there for the Serbian Army soldiers who died in the battle. Near the top, on the Greek side, stands a small church named St. Peter’s.
Wikipedia says the Voras Mountains host a ski resort and the hot springs at Loutra Loutrakiou, also called Pozar. The hot springs on a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki therefore lie in this range. Wikipedia’s Edessa article names winter sports, ancient Pella and the waterfalls as reasons for tourism there.
One transfer company lists the Pozar baths at the foot of Mount Voras. Another operator says the water at the Edessa falls comes from the springs of Kaimaktsalan and its snowmelt. So the mountain links both halves of a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki.
What do you pass on the road west from Thessaloniki?
A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki reaches the Pella regional unit. Wikipedia says that unit borders the Thessaloniki regional unit to the east. Its largest town, Giannitsa, lies 48 kilometers from Thessaloniki.
Wikipedia places Giannitsa in the central part of the Giannitsa–Thessaloniki plain, the largest lowland area in Greece. The ruins of ancient Pella lie about 7 kilometers from the town. The Axios River lies east of the town. Giannitsa Lake lay in the same area until the mid-twentieth century, then people drained it.
Wikipedia says the Romans built the Via Egnatia in the second century B.C. It reached the Aegean Sea at Thessalonica and ran about 1,120 kilometers in total. The Pella and Edessa articles both place those cities on its route. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki therefore passes through country that the old road crossed.
The Vardar, called the Axios in Greece, reaches the Aegean Sea at Thessaloniki, Wikipedia says. That city is where a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki begins. The river is 388 kilometers long, with 76 kilometers in Greece. It empties west of the city, where it forms a large delta with the Loudias and the Haliacmon.
Wikipedia names National Road 2 and the Arnissa–Antigonos national road as the main roads of the Pella regional unit. Both are part of European route E86. The article adds that the Thessaloniki–Florina railway crosses the south-west of the unit. Edessa, a stop on a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki, has the main train station.
Wikipedia says no national road passes through the town of Aridaia, but five provincial roads connect it with nearby settlements. The town has no railway station of its own. Wikipedia lists Pella 1 as Edessa–Apsalos–Aridaia and Pella 7 as Aridaia–Loutraki–Pozar Baths. Together they join the two places named in a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki.
What are Pella and Almopia, the countryside around the baths?
Pella, named after the ancient capital of Macedonia, is a regional unit in Central Macedonia. Almopia is one of its municipalities, and Edessa is its capital. This countryside surrounds the stops of a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki.
Wikipedia measures the Pella regional unit at 2,505.8 square kilometers. Arable land, forests and pastures cover the majority of it. Its southern part is flat, and in ancient times it was a gulf connected to the Aegean Sea. The south also has a number of orchards.
The tourism list for the unit holds both stops of a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki. It names the Pozar thermal baths, the waterfalls in the city of Edessa, the Loudias River and ancient Pella. It also names the Ottoman monuments of Giannitsa, such as the Clock Tower and the mausoleum of Gazi Evrenos.
Wikipedia gives these heights: Mount Vermion 2,027 meters, Mount Tzenna 2,182 meters and Mount Pinovo 2,154 meters. The main plains are Pozar in the north and the vast plain of Giannitsa in the southeast. The unit ends at the border with North Macedonia in the north. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki stays inside it.
Almopia is a municipality and a former province of the Pella unit. Wikipedia says the province was one of three in the former prefecture, with Aridaia as its capital. Aridaia sits at the northwest edge of the unit. Wikipedia lists the Byzantine Castle of Chrysi, 7 kilometers from the town, which dates to the eighth century A.D.
The name Almopia comes from the Almopes, a Paeonian tribe. Wikipedia says they were expelled during the reign of Alexander I of Macedon, when the area joined Lower Macedonia. The later Middle Ages knew the area as Moglena, from the Slavic word for fog. In Ottoman times the Turkish name was Karacova, meaning Black Valley.
What else do travellers ask about a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki?
Where is Lake Vegoritida, west of Edessa?
Wikipedia places Lake Vegoritida 18 kilometers west of Edessa, at an elevation of 540 meters. It counts the lake among the biggest natural lakes of northern Greece. The lake also carries the older name Lake Ostrovo.
The lake lies in Macedonia, partly in the Florina regional unit and partly in the Pella regional unit. The Voras Mountains lie to the north of it. The operator pages checked list no lake stop on a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki.
Is Naousa part of a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki?
Naousa does not appear in the itineraries read for this post. Wikipedia places it in Imathia, within Central Macedonia, on the eastern slopes of the Vermio range.
The city lies 22 kilometers north of Veria and 90 kilometers west of Thessaloniki. Wikipedia gives its census population as 19,706 inhabitants. The Arapitsa river crosses the city and forms a waterfall inside it. The xinomavro variety of Naousa red wine holds a European protected designation of origin.
Which airport serves a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki?
Thessaloniki Airport, officially named Makedonia, serves the city. Wikipedia places it 13 kilometers southeast of Thessaloniki, in Thermi, and calls it the main airport of Northern Greece. It ranks the airport third in the country by size, behind the airports of Athens and Heraklion.
The airport has two terminals. Car rental offices stand in the departure sections of both terminals, Wikipedia says. Taxi services run outside the terminal building 24 hours a day. Day and night, city bus 01X/01N runs between the airport and the Thessaloniki bus station.
What climate does northern Greece have?
Wikipedia calls Greece’s climate predominantly Mediterranean. Climates in the north are mixed, part continental, part Mediterranean and part humid subtropical. The complex geography of the country gives it a wide range of local climates.
Wikipedia gives the largest part of Thessaloniki a cold semi-arid climate. A Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki leaves that city. The same climate type is found in areas of Macedonia and Thessaly.
What do travellers pack for a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki?
Swimwear, a towel and a bathrobe are on the list of one operator for the thermal baths. It says lockers with keys are available for personal belongings, and that towels can be rented at the baths. The same page mentions changing rooms.
For the summer season, the same operator lists sunglasses, sunscreen and a hat. These items come from one operator’s page for a Pozar thermal baths and Edessa day trip from Thessaloniki. A transfer company’s page for the Pozar and Edessa route lists no packing items.