God bless the Dutch!

Greetings from Meteora!

We are in a little town at the base of these incredible rock cliffs, and perched atop them are various (very old) monasteries. But more about that in a bit...first a quick summary of our travel day yesterday.

It involved:
-3 buses
-3 games of cribbage while waiting in a hot, smoky bus station, all of which Lo won handily. Luckily my perfect blend of competitive yet gracious spirit made the games fun still. :)
-hours of staring at not very nice scenery through the bus windows...
-and all in temperatures hovering around 100 degrees. (Thank goodness the AC on the buses mostly worked well.)

When we finally tumbled off the bus around 4 pm here in Kalambaka, we were very focused on finding a swimming pool. And we did...after getting slightly sketchy directions from our hotel proprietor, and walking a few km. As we approached, we heard loud music, and thought someone was listening to it in their house. Nope! The pool was actually a club, with bumping music that could be heard far and wide. And, it was full of Greeks smoking, drinking, swimming, and thoroughly enjoying the atmoshpere. Not another American in sight. But, we hopped in, swam a bit, read our Homer, and enjoyed being cool for the first time that day. (Picture to come as soon as we can find a place that will let us upload them...)


As for today...hiking to these monasteries was something we both had been anticipating as a highlight of this trip. We were not to be put off by the weather, although I must admit that as I looked up at the sheer rock faces I was inwardly a bit dismayed. Loretta forged ahead, we decided to hike through the mountain trails instead of on the asphalt road...which was mostly great. Butterflies floated by, we saw two tortoises trucking along, and the scenery was really beautiful. But oh...so...hot.

the first tortoise, the second one i actually heard rustling in the brush to our right and got a little nervous, i put my arm back and stepped back and said "what's that?" i learned that loud leaves rustling and no apparent movement from that direction probably doesn't mean threat, but tortoise

Erin on the hike...we weren't there yet
Lo on the hike (re-enactment actually), but this was after and I was still pretty enthusiastic, except for passing this very SKETCHY looking cat, I thought it might be feral, Erin graciously offered to go first.

My memories of this hike will always include looking ahead at Lo, looking up at the clifftop monasteries, and wondering how on earth we were going to get there...but we finally did.

this lovely depiction of a young priest taking the stairs and an older guy taking the ramp, this sign was where the two paths split at St. Nicholas' Monestery the orginal, I know you're all wondering where it could be is actually inside St. Nick's.
This icon may look familiar to those who read sharon's blog, it's st. nick.
this is about 2 km into our hike (actually more like 4 b/c someone (me...loretta) led us out of town the wrong way...oops, well it's only 44 out. I'm pointing to St. Nick's Monastery.

We even made it to two of them, peeked inside at all of the amazing icons from centuries past, rested, and then decided to try for public transporation back to town. No such luck, though...buses were done for the day (at 3:00!), and we were too cheap to call a taxi. I was marshalling my last reserves for the hour+ hike back down when a couple nearby who had overheard our transport discussion said, "You going down? We'll take you."

Friends, words cannot express our delight at this ride...neither of us could stop smiling or thanking them...they were a lovely Dutch couple, driving around Europe in their camper van, and they were funny and kind...the woman even offered us a lemon drop once we got in the car. They drove past their campsite and brought us straight to our hotel. As we waved good bye I may even have called them angels. And, by the way, the thermometer in their van said 44 celsius. That's 111. Phew!

The view from the road into the valley.
One of the monasteries.

Tomorrow, off to Thessaloniki on the 7:42 train!