Mighty Meteora

 

With the rain and the changing colours of leaves on the trees we are clearly having a race with Autumn. With just a few more days before we dive south to Rhodes, we are gambling that we have our timing up to the mark. It was always going to be a close run on this trip and so far so good.

Ensconced in our small guest house in an elevated part on the edge of the centre of Kalambaka we were in a more rural, even traditional and peasant area. We enjoyed a couple of long walks and quite an exhilarating time visiting four of the monasteries in the area in sunny weather conditions. These are unique places and well worth the effort to get there. Great place for our fitness training although we opted out of the possibility to tour by mountain bike. We did not see any others on bikes either-the shops had lots available. Tour buses are the go here, especially for the over 60's, and there are plenty of those. Mainly eastern bloc visitors it seems.

 

 

 

The rocky areas themselves are awesome and endlessly fascinating. We are not climbers but we did see a few about.  We thoroughly enjoyed learning a little on the religious life in the monasteries.

 

 

 

From Meteora we have now moved east to Thessaloniki, another place that appears to be central to the history of this part of the world. The bustle after Meteora is almost Asian in feel and when combined with the sometimes ramshackle road and footpath constructions, we are having fun running the obstacle courses.

 

 

 

And of course it is better to be coming through this part of the world as a baby boomer traveller than one of the millions of the various refugees that have relocated throughout history or as a POW on your way to four years of Stalag camp life as Randall's father was when he passed through Salonika in June 1941.

 

 

The weather is back on track and it looks like our gamble with Autumn conditions has paid off. (The last time I said that in Corfu the rain promptly arrived to spoil things).

People wise, almost everybody we interact with is very friendly and extremely helpful. Ticket collectors, fellow travellers, taverna operators, guesthouse owners, shop assistants, you name it. It seems to me that most Greeks are confident in themselves and here in Thessaloniki, they are enjoying life. The cafes are full, the coffees and cakes are going well and whilst the country has infrastructure and political issues, show me a country that isn't having problems at the moment. This is a country that is just getting on with it, much as they always have done.

From here we fly to Rhodes and pick up a bit more on our history lessons. We also have been notified that we have a change of gullet for our boat and cycle tour and a slight change of itinerary, now Marmaris-Marmaris not Marmaris-Kalkan. Everything else remains as planned.