Hotel Sakellaridis Kalambaka

... an incredibly rugged valley until we reached Kalambaka.

The rocky outcrops that the Metéora Monasteries are built on look completely different then the surrounding countryside. It was cool to see them get closer and closer as we approached. We flew over the region and then landed in Kalambaka where a driver and guide met us.

We went to Great Metéoroan first, which is the largest and the tallest ...

... german man in his 50's on holiday and he gave me a life down and I bought him a coffee and went back to the room to wait on Ian who was still walking down the mountain. Ian enjoyed the walk down though saying the scenery was amazing not my cup of tea and I told him that I did not want to go in the first place.

We had our first major bust up not bad for 21 days of being in each others pockets so we made up by going for lunch and having some frappe ...

... 7 euro which is really 7 whole english pounds I dont think I am ever going to get over it but was in that much shock just paid and off we went. Must also say that everyone here so far has been very grumpy not sure whats in the water and hope it gets better this evening. We are planning on something nice to eat but now 7 euro short so will be just main couses and water I think. We are finding that Greece has gone really expensive in parts so ...

This morning we were picked up by our bus at the hotel, and taken to a central city redistribution point, where the various half-day, full-day & 2 & 3-day tours commenced from. Once on the right bus for our 2-day trip to see Delphi ruins, & Meteora monasteries, we made our way out of the sprawling Athens & into the countryside littered with cotton fields (7th largest producer in the world!) and olive plantations, amidst large & seemingly ...

... ts hills since the first years of the Eastern Orthodox Church (11th century). Around the 14th century, they began building monasteries in the hills - the remote locations ensuring that they would be safe from maurauding Turks. We maurauders checked in to a small pension just in time to avoid the advancing rain. Arthur, the owner, and his mother, Katerina, cooked us a delicious meal of lamb ...

... mood is present on the site and a huge sense of history, of momentous occasions. As usual, I enjoyed watching Karen discover the site, one Alexander is known to have visited. The essential point for Karen's purpose is to understand how the site appeared in the Classical Era when Alexander lived, because so much of what is visible now is from the Roman Era. We still hiked up to see the stadion and descended later to see the ...

... just sat very close to us and a man who approached Robert and started a conversation with him and offering him some dodgy looking chocolate . These 2 people were clearly not with us mentally and obviously had some sort of chemical dependency. After waiting for a while I asked a bus driver if we were waiting in the right place and he said we were waiting in ...

All's well, and we admire not our VW Polo, but a gleaming black four-door Ford Focus. For its size, it seems very roomy, and we judge that the petrol consumption will be excellent. The suitcases fit perfectly and the staff explains how to get out of the city centre and onto the motorway north. At 14:00 we are on our way! On the insistence of Cecilia, our first stop after escaping the Athens suburbs is a motorway ...

... they had to hoist up supplies (and sometimes monks) via rope and pulley. Yikes. We took the easier way up, with a rare 7 a.m. wakeup call (rare on a non-travel day, at least) so that we could make the once-daily city bus that takes you to the largest monastery, Grand Meteora. From there, we walked down to visit Vaarlam and Roussanou (which is often called a monastery, but is actually a convent). Roussanou was our favorite - proving of course that women really know ...

... br>













The King Leonidas statue was built in Thermopylae, there is actually nothing else but the statue here. And we are not allowed to cross the road to take a picture, but I think I still managed to get a great shot of the statue!
















Even the Kebab in the ...