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Published: December 1st 2006
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Meteora
A really magical place I lost a large part of my pictures for this update quite unfortunately, but I manage to salvage some.
Marc-Andre and I took the train to Kalampaka from Athens, the village close to the famous monasteries on pillars of Meteora early in the morning. It was an easy and painless 4 to 5 hours riding during which we saw some beautiful mountains and greek countryside scenery. We talked for most of the way about travel and history (Marc-Andre is a archeology major) and broke the monotony by eating some delicious sandwhiches (his was, I'm sure) we had lovingly prepared in the morning.
After a bit of searching in the village, we got a heated guesthouse (it was shockingly cold up here) for a price that made me want to leave Greece as soon as possible. After we dropped our bags in the room, we went to the town center and got a cab to the monastery which were a few kilometers from the center.
The Orthodox monasteries of Meteora have one particularities: they're built on natural pillars rock formation so as to make them impregnable. Historically there were no stairs leading up the pillars and people would move
Thessaloniki's harbour
The sky was bizzare. This wasn't a sunset, it was taken in the middle of the afternoon. in and out with a cable system (which is still in use today by the monks). The monasteries resisted the turks much longer than the villages below as they had a nearly perfect defensive position. Nowadays the monks are less concerned about fighting off the turks and have built stone-cut stairs and the place is a massive tourist attraction (although we were in the off-season so it wasn't too bad).
We entered the main monastery for free (there was no one to make us pay the 2 euros it should've cost as we found out later). We went around the monastery which was really interesting. There were rooms that showed how the monks lived, museum rooms (that were unfortunately very often not captioned in english), a room full of human skulls, chapels with interesting wall murals/frescos and fearless little kitties who are obviously used to seeing tourist around. The views from the ramparts was really amazing.
After this we walked up to other monastery (there are about 14 of them, although only 6 are now inhabited) on the main road. We walked for a few hours until the sun was getting dangerously low and we decided to head
Fresco
In the maın monastery back We tried to go down to the village by some trail which would've cut our walking time by half (the monasteries are about 6km from the village by road) but we ended up getting stupidly lost. We decided to play it safe and walk back to the village on the road. If you come to Meteora I suggest you come earleir than we did so you have plenty of time to wander around and explore. I'm sad I didn't have more time up there.
It took about an hour of walking in the dark before we reached the first village. As soon as we started entering inhabited area after the monastery it seems that all there was was an endless string of restaurant and hotels, all empty. I thanked god I was not visiting the place in the high season even though we were freezing. Once back in town, we had dinner at some taverna where locals were religiously watching a football (soccer!) game. We couldn't talk while the game was on without getting "shhh" or mean stares and as soon as it finished some old men got into a long and very loud good-natured argument which totally
reinforced my greek sterotype. The food was of fairly low quality unfortunately (some chicken slices and a few french fries with no attempt at salad for a good 7 euros).
The next day I was leaving very early to the city nearby where I had been told by the guesthouse owner that I could easily get a bus to Albania. I was happy since I had been planning to go back all the way to Thessaloniki and get an overnight from there. However, it turns out getting up at 5AM didn't pay off in the end. It took me an hour to get to the other city but when I got there I was told through signs and more than broken english that they didn't have any bus to Albania so I just went back to plan A and took a bus to Thessaloniki. The locals gathered around me as I was trying to get a ticket to Albania and they looked at me as if I had said I wanted to go backpack in Mogadishu. Greeks don't like Albanians very much (now that I think of it, they don't like any of their neighbours).
So I spent
Me
With the maın monastery in the background another few hours on the bus to Thessaloniki, enjoying some more Greek countryside. I was in town by around noon but the ticket office for buses to Albania only opened at 3PM and since we were Sunday there was no left-luggage facilities. So I stuck around for a few hours before I bought my ticket. Then I went in town on a random bus, I hopped on it with a canadian couple who told me it was going downtown. I had absolutely no idea what to do in Thessaloniki but I figured if I was there I might as well explore a bit.
I was dropped somewhere randomly in town and made my way to the waterfront which was lovely, full of people strolling or sipping capucinos in the endless string of cafe shop. It is the kind of place I'd like to hang out if I was living in town. For some reason even though we were a few hours before sunset the sky was pink-orange as if it was sunset. I walked on the waterfront for a while and sat around the White Tower (lost the pictures) reading a book until the temperature dropped too low. Then
I retreated to a gyros place before going back to the bus station to wait for my bus.
So after 3 days in Greece I was leaving. It's a bit too little to make a judgement on the country. But I found that the negative aspect of greece I had been told about (ugly cities, crazy drivers, trash everywhere, hairy women) were exaggerated. Maybe it is because I come from India that I thought the country was amazingly clean. But anyway it was a bit too expansive for me so I decided not to linger too long. I'm happy I went though. Both sights I saw were amazing (Acropolis and Meteora) and well worth the detour.
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