Day 12 - Kalambaka

Maybe it was the smog. Here's the view from the highest hill in Athens, yesterday morning. It's called whatever the Greek is for "Hill of the Wolves."



The sky is gray on a sunny day.... Now that I'm out in the countryside, I'm breathing much easier. Here's the view from my room last night.



Kalambaka is the town near the Meteora, a forest of rock pinacles to where monks fled back in Ottoman days. I took a hike around and between and over these rocks this morning. I left at seven (the monestaries open at nine) and it was very quiet. Only the sounds of birds chirping and singing and crowing. Very little wind either. But thankfully cool (even though I was still drenched in sweat when I climbed that first hill).

This is the highest monastery. Note how the entrance at the bottom is a door in the rock face.



Why don't they make Amazing Race clues like, when the teams are somewhere in Athens, "Make your way to the monastery in this photo"?



Then the teams would have to figure out the train schedule and the bus schedule or maybe just pay the huge bucks for a taxi (all this of course after they figured out it was in the Meteora). I took the train here, or at least I thought I was taking the train to here. Three hours into the four-hour trip, we stopped and they got us off the train and put us on a bus. Maybe there was a problem on the tracks on the spur line to Kalambaka? The ticket agent whom I got my ticket from and the electronic signs on the train platform at the last station both thought the train was still going to Kalambaka, so obviously something took them by surprise. In any case, we got off the comfortable train and onto the hot bus and wound up forty-five minutes late.

From the "interesting places to park your car" file:



Here's the view from the monastery I actually went inside (right at 9:00). Note the downspout detail.