Day 24 Meteora to Thessaloniki

Meteora is made up of massive rock pinnacles, and on 24 of these pinnacles are monasteries. The pinnacles are immense solid rocks split by earthquakes and weathered by wind and water over 60 million years. The monks built their monasteries on top of them during a period between the 14th to 16th centuries as it was considered the perfect place to achieve absolute isolation, and it has now become a holy place for Christian pilgrims around the world, as well as a major tourist destination.

Fortunately for us they no longer use ropes and nets to ascend the monasteries, there is a perfectly good road that will take you to the gates. The down side to this is that the bus loads of tourists on tours also get to bypass the rope system and because we were there just after 9am we became one of the mob (if possible we usually try and time our visits to avoid them if we can). 

We started off at the biggest monastery, the Megalo (Great) Meteora, There are still many steps to ascend and as women aren't allowed to wear pants K borrowed a wrap around skirt from the pile. The monastery is in superb condition with a stunning church where many people are praying, including orthodox priests with mobile phones. The views are breathtaking as are the crowds and we drive onto the next on our list.

Monastery Varlaam is a slightly smaller but just as immaculate version of the previous monastery. Apparently women have only been permitted inside since 1928 when there was a fire and they helped to put it out. The frescoes are vibrantly preserved and we watched a man working on one of them above his head. One room holds an immense 16th century oak barrel that a lot of people think held wine to while away the hours but was actually used to store water.

The third monastery was St Stephen's but here the mass of teenage school groups and tourists made it a crush and as the owner of our hotel said, seen one monastery seen them all so we set our GPS to take us to Thessaloniki and we hit the road.

Thessaloniki has a large promenade on the water with many upmarket restaurants and bars, no signs of austerity measures and high unemployment rates in this part of the city at least. Although the promenade is quite nice there is a major road between the restaurants and the water so it is very noisy.