Advertisement
Made it to Meteora in time! After being on the train from 11am to 4pm my time, I set foot in Meteora thinking that I had no chance of seeing the monasteries here today as most close around 5pm and it was a minimum 45 mins walk just to my hotel from the station, let alone the walk up to the monasteries from there. However! A taxi driver offered to take me up to the highest monastery (which is closed tomorrow) and let me visit it while he waited outside, and then to drive me around to the remaining monasteries for pictures. For 23euro, it seemed like a deal at the time an I'm still glad I did it because otherwise I would not have seen the largest monastery since it closes on Tuesday 😊
The Grand Meteora monastery is both the highest and largest of the 6 here at Meteora. It's amazing enough that they built these things in such impossible locations (a few were only accessible by rope ladder until a few decades ago), but what's more amazing is what they filled them with, both in manuscripts and in materials. This is one place where the pictures can't
do justice, since many of the rooms did not allow photos 😞
Also note that even here, at the top of these nearly impassable cliffs, there are still stray cats wandering around.
After the whirlwind visit, I made an appointment to be taken back up to the 2nd-highest monastery at 9:30am the next morning planning to walk down to the rest before my 3pm time to catch the first of a few buses on the way to the ferry to Italy (hopefully doable tomorrow). It's looking like I can shave quite a bit off of my travel time (10 hours or so) if I pay extra to bus to Igoumenitsa and then ferry from there to Bari, Italy rather than using my free train tickets to head all the way south to Patra.
The rest of the day was spent walking around the town here. I have to say, it's really very nice here. I would definitely say that you go to Athens to see ruins and museums, but not to see Greece. Here, however, I felt like I was actually seeing Greece. I managed to come during a very slow day for tourism, so the town
and monasteries seemed more "natural" I guess I would say? Either way the scenery and weather were amazing, the people nice and happy, and the atmosphere just generally pleasant. If you do come to Greece, even though I guess Athens is a must just due to the ruins there, I would still recommend Meteora most.
The rocks here look like they'd be great to climb, considering the number of mini-caves they contain, as well as all the impromptu shrines/altars/etc people have set up in them over the centuries. There were some climbing lessons being taught at the rock not 2 minutes walk from my hotel when I got back in the evening, which I had planned to go out and see if I hadn't fallen asleep 😞
Ah, and I finally found my sunscreen today, although it cost 17 FREAKING euros for the thing. Better be worth it. It'd better make me whiter after using it at that price.
I also ate my first real Greek meal today (since the earlier ones were either at tourist traps or eaten in a rush). I started with Ouzo, which is the strongest-tasing anise-flavored experience you would ever have. Too
strong for me, even when mixed with water (I only drank half of the thing, heh). It's supposedly to cleanse the pallete-- which makes sense, since I found it difficult to taste anything after 😉 Next was a starter of tzatziki, which seemed like cheese with cucumbers, and was good. I had a chicken meal for the appetizer, stuffed with cheese, cured ham and peppers and served with both rice and soaked potatoes of some sort. This was recommended by the server as "something very Greek," although I have a feeling he was catering to what he thought were a foreigner's tastes. either was he did good, as it was delicious. For desert I has a Calaif with ice cream, which was sort of like a large shredded wheat piece soaked in syrup, although instead of wheat it was something else that was sweet that I couldn't put my finger on (it sounded like the server sad it was "all ice" which must be me mishearing him as that makes no sense to me?).
After that it was an early night, sort of accidentally -- I'm actually writing this after I woke up at 5am the next morning. Stupid
jet lag. There might be a day with no entry if travel to Rome takes as long as I fear it will. Wish me luck! 😊
NOTE: again, videos to come later. Apparently the travelblog.org video uploader is not very good. At all.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.14s; Tpl: 0.023s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0687s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
mary
non-member comment
djlksjlkjlks;d
hey, i see you met skully on this trip... doesn't look like he had much to say. seriously, it is truly amazing to see the incredibly dangerous placement of these monasteries. did you hear of any wacky stories about these places? or some amazing spiritual encounters that happened?