6 months in Greece definitely gives you plenty of time to try and discover many interesting places. However this was not a new place for me, since I have been here last year as well, but the beauty of this place does make you return as often as you can for another dose of remarkable.

Luckily for us, we caught finally some beautiful weather after waiting for about 2 weeks for some clear sky and sun, thus we went on our way to Thessaly region of Greece to the wonderful Meteora Monasteries. From Athens it took us about 4.5 hours drive to reach Kalambaka, which is the closest town at the foot of the mountains. The road is quite scenic and does give you, finally, some sights of fields besides the mountains.It snowed also these days, thus the peaks of the faraway mountains were white adding to the wonderful views.

As the translation of the name in Greek says it, meteora means “suspended in the air” which is not far at all from the truth. From the 24 monasteries built here in the 14 and 15 century on the peaks of these 100-150 meters high rocks, only 6 are still inhabited, the monks reaching to such extreme in their wish to be left alone with God.

Today some of the monasteries are inhabited by nuns and a strict clothing code is requested…all shoulders to be covered, men have to wear long pants while women long skirts. Not sure how much of this applies really today at the amount of tourists they get each day. We were there on a Wednesday and we still struggled through 3 or 4 buses with tourists from Italy and Poland not to mention this is off-season.

You can get to the monasteries by car or climbing on the steps of the small trails leading from the village bellow. No matter which route you take the monasteries still reveal themselves one by one, making you remain stunned by such views.  Some of the monasteries were closed but we did climb to Varlaam Monastery following the aprox. 140 steps to reach it, which gave a beautiful views to Roussanou monastery bellow and to “Great Meteoron” Monastery behind. The interior was quite interesting with a museum and letting you see how they would bring things up in the old days.  I will leave you now to enjoy the photographs.