Back to Greece in Photos

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday. We've almost made it through another week, and it time again to join Nicole's Friday Face Off   and Gillena's  Friday Lunch Break .

     I'm getting close to being done with my Greece photos, but I don't believe I ever shared photos from Meteora. I hope you don't mind if I share a few more because I went away 5 months ago and I can't imagine people aren't sick of posts about my trip. 😏 However, Meteora was a really interesting place and at least as far as my travels have taken me, quite unique.

     Meteora is an area north of the city of Trikala (in inland Western/Central Greece) where there are 6 ancient monasteries and one nunnery that are perched on these high pillar like rocks. These religious sites were built in between the 13th-14th centuries.  I read online that there used to be 24 monasteries, but  you'll see in some of my photos how precariously perched some of these buildings are. I'm surprised so many have existed this long. You can visit these places when they are open (each has their own time schedules), but you need to climb a lot of stairs to get up to them.

This is the start of the stairs at the Nunnery which was the first place we visited. You can see the building up on top of the hill behind the trees.

These next 3 photos show a few of the monasteries. Sorry I can't name them.

This next photo is the view looking down into the valley from the Nunnery. The second photo includes my face for Friday Face Off, but some of the view is blocked by my head. 😏

If you look carefully in this next photo you can see the stairs winding upward. 

     We didn't visit all of the monasteries. I think it could be done in a day, but parking was  limited especially by noontime when it was actually pretty crowded. Plus it takes a bit of time to visit each place, and we weren't running up the stairs and racing  through each that we did visit. I will say that reading how there might be 150 (or more) stairs up to reach a monastery was a bit intimidating, but the climbs never seemed as bad as what we thought they would be. 

       I love how one of the monasteries we visited had this pulley systems. They used it to transport supplies.

Here's a few more views.

This last photo for today is of Agios Stephanos, which is the only monastery with no stairs to climb. 

      Next week I'll share some views in the monasteries (at least where photos were allowed). But here's a few travel hints if you ever go to Greece and decide to visit Meteora. First of all, get there early as it was less crowded before noon than after noon. Secondly, wear comfortable walking shoes. Women are required to wear a skirt when entering, but you can rent one for a couple of Euros at each place. (The nunnery lends you one for free.) You can cheat like we did though. We each brought large scarves and wrapped them around our pants. That was all we needed to enter. And finally, there is no food available. We ended up leaving mid-afternoon because we were hungry. If you really want to visit all of the monasteries, I'd suggest you bring some snacks or even a bag lunch with you.

     That's all for me today. Have a great start to your weekend.