day two - meteora

woke up this morning at around 5:30 so that I had time to eat breakfast before the beginning of the four day classical coach tour. breakfast was actually really good, but the greeks don't know the proper way to cook bacon apparently. it's not crispy like it should be, but whatever, the fresh squeezed orange juice more than makes up for it.

we all packed on to the bus at 7am and we were told by our tour guide (Marina) that we had six hours of driving ahead of us, and that we would be stopping every two hours to "pay our respects at the temple of relief."

so it turns out that greece has tonnes of mountains. I mean, I knew it wasn't a flat country, but it's almost alpine. we drove out of athens, towards the city of lamia, which is about half way to kalampaka (which is where the rocks of meteora are located). but before we got to lamia, we made a quick stop at the famous battlefield of thermopylae, which is where 300 spartan warriors and their allies held off the persian king xerxes and his 100 000 (or 1 million depending on the source) men who were intent on invading greece. today the pass isn't all that impressive, but in 480BC there was only about 50 metres between the bottom of the hill and the aegean sea. if the spartans weren't betrayed by a greek traitor, it is quite possible that the small greek force would've been able to hold off the persians indefinitely. the smallest ridge in that picture, the one just to the left of the two passing trucks, is actually the burial mound of the spartan dead, and the original memorial was somewhere in that area, now it's on the other side of the highway.

we only spent a few minutes at thermopylae (it really isn't all that much to look at) before we got back into the bus and continued our long drive. we finally scaled the last of the mountains and descended into the plain of thessaly, which is the country's agricultural centre. after being surrounded by mountains for the better part of two days, it was actually kind of neat to see nothing but flatness over such a large area. We drove for a couple of hours and finally stopped at a taverna in kalampaka for our lunch. This being my first experience with a taverna and a large tour group, I was somewhat surprised that our meal was prepared so quickly. I just had a greek salad (hey, it’s Greece!), which turned out to be pretty good. After lunch we started our drive up to the monasteries perched on the rocks high above the town. there are something like 6 monastaries that are still inhabited today, but there used to be quite a bit more. the monks and nuns built them on the rocks so that they could live in peace in quiet, the whole hermit thing, and it's kind of odd that we actually got to go inside two of the monastaries, what with the vows of silence and all that. the gardens and the courtyards were amazing and it was something else to be standing on a rock that was a good 300m above the plain below. there are roads that lead to the monastaries now, but back in the day (early 20th century and before) the only way to get to these monastaries was by being hauled up in a net. apparently the only time the monks replaced the ropes was when they broke...in mid-air.

we spent a lot of time in the monastaries, probably too much if you ask me, but Marina had quite a bit to say about life in the buildings and the history of the monastaries themselves, none of which I can remember as I was pretty bored after 40 minutes standing in a very dark church while she talked about the paintings and what-not. sorry.

so that's it for day two, tomorrow we make our way towards delphi and the sanctuary of apollo, which is on the slopes of mt. parnassus. it should be pretty interesting.