City of suspended rocks, Meteora!

The Plains of Thermopylae

On the way to Meteora, we made an unsceduled stop at a monument to the Spartan King Leonidas. In 480BC Thermopylae was the scene of a huge battle, and if any of you have seen 300 you will know that it was 300 Spartans (as well as a few thousand Greeks) against tens of thousands of invading Persians. An epic tale of courage in the face of adversity. And we were standing on the same site, it was really something.

Meteora

From temples to monastries as we reached Meteora, a city with strange cliffs that grow out of the plains in the middle of nowhere. And atop these cliffs are Greek Orthodox monastries, but noone really knows how the builders got the supplies or cranes up there in the first place. Very mysterious. If the monks know, they're not telling.

Since it is a monastry we had to cover up, shawls and long skirts for girls, long sleeves and pants for guys. The provided covers were very attractive, polyester gets nice and sweaty on a hot day :)

We visited the Grand Meteora monastry and the views were amazing. I can't even fathom how anyone would have built these things back in the 16th century. There are 6 remaining that have survived natural disasters and wars, and they are really beautiful. We didn't see any monks, but the art and small museum were really amazaing. Some of the old rooms (kitchen, dining room etc) were preserved to show how they would have looked back in the day. There was even a weird room full of skulls and bones.

In lots of the rooms with religious relics we couldn't take pics, but you get an idea of how peaceful this place was even when it was full of tourists.

We only had about an hour to see the monastry by the time we got there, and afterwards we hung out by the pool at our campsite and had bbq tea on a fire we built ourselves.

Yet another early night (I hate being sick), and we were packing up and moving to...

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