Meteora

From Athens we went north-ish. Originally intending to go to Delphi, we thought we would instead get more acquainted with the Greek preoccupation of building monasteries on cliffs, so we went to Meteora. As soon as we got off the train we were snap-happy tourists. The rocks are really quite incredible, jutting up from the earth. Meteora means suspended in the air (I think) which is quite appropriate. We wandered around the town of Kalampaka (or kalabaka or kalambaka, depending on how you translate the greek alphabet) until we got sprung on by a fellow with a hotel. He was awfully insistant but we got the price down a bit (haha! negotiating is great when it works).


Rocks jutting over the village

We went to the monasteries the next day...








Crazy Greek monks...

The monks used to haul up supplies and people by rope to the monasteries. The story goes that one nervous pilgrim asked how often they replace the ropes, the monk replied: whenever they break of course...! The ropes have now been replaced with steps so no hauling was to be had

I wasn't able to get my sought after monk picture (they wear all black, flowing clothes, and round flat-topped hats. Often they come with a beard) because I didn't see any monks! I was sort of expecting some lokum and another talking to in a strange language resembling english, but it wasn't to be.

I was forewarned that women are supplied with wraps at the entrance (to preserve the dignity of the monasteries). There were signs before you went in that women wearing shorts, slacks, or pantaloons would NOT be admitted. I wasn't wearing shorts, but I wasn't sure if I was wearing pantaloons or slacks....what exactly are slacks??

Anyway it didn't matter because I was suppied with this sexy number:

I'm bringing sexy back...

There was the option of the black and white, the white and black, or the grey (pictured). Of course, grey is the new black...

Daniel went searching for the ultimate view and had trouble getting back again. I offered all the encouragement I could...

Wandering around we met up with an Aussie bloke who we ended up having dinner with. He was only recently in Greece so we were swapping stories and I was giving cuisine tips. Actually, I haven't mentioned this yet but the greeks have a lot of tasty pastry things. There is the cheese pie for instance (think cheese and pastry) or you have the slightly healthier cheese and spinach pie. Then for pudding you have the cream pie, which is really more like a custard. They differentiate the different pies by loading one with icing sugar on top. On two occasions now I have had a chocking fit after inhaling icing sugar whilst eating...

Anyway, I was talking to Luke (the aussie) about the cream pies so we went searching for them. At 8pm you can't get cream pies in Kalampaka. First we had to figure out what they were called (the spelling is unfortunately unavailable as I no longer have a greek keyboard) then we had to figure out how they were pronounced (bagatsa), then we had to figure out who sold them (noone at that time). In any case we got something a bit sweeter and more impressive, and nearly made ourselves sick....it was a good night.