Get thee to a nunnery!

Trip Start May 16, 2008
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Trip End Sep 15, 2008


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Flag of Greece  , Thessaly,
Thursday, June 12, 2008

Drove through Trikala to Meteora where there are monastaries and nunneries built on top of stagmalite-like rock formations in the sky!  Literally, Meteora means up in the sky and these buildings were built in the 12-15th C using a pulley to get the materials and people (!!) up and down.  Visited 6 of them, they are still working so its amazing to walk around these living museums!!  |The pulleys were hand cranked but now seem to be electric.  You need faith to get in one of the baskets and make the trip!!!!  Wow.

The monks offer you food and drink when you make the trek (they have the pulley and basket....they built the tourists a lot a lot of stairs to get up each peak)......phew!  Eat it if they offer it.  Smile.  

The nunneries had the nicer flowers (way to go ladies!) but the monastaries had the relics.  Some monastaries only have 2 monks, some had up to 31.  I visited the nunnery of St Stephanos.....my name saint and got an icon to bring home.  The Orthodox frescos are beautiful, though no pictures allowed off course.  You can see where the Ottomans, where they took over, scratched off the saints faces....which happened in churches all over Greece. 

What a unique and peaceful place!
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