Day 5...A Longer Day Yet

Our day started with a wake-up alarm at 4am...yes, I said 4am. We had booked ourselves a flight from Athens to Crete for 9:45, and we knew it was going to take about 4-4.5 hours to get to Athens International from Meteora. It was a long drive, and hard to stay awake for, but we made it fine and it one-piece...even though I missed seeing a railroad crossing on the highway and hit it going 80km/h...that was the biggest bounce I have ever had in a car!

The night before, we did our sunset tour of Meteora, and it was nice. The sun was not really cooperating with us, as it had (and is still on Crete) quite hazy. The locals believe it might be the humidity, or some dust storms from Africa, but it doesn't matter to us – it is still hazy at a distance. We did learn some interesting facts about Meteora, in that hermits wanting to be closer to God and starve themselves of worldly pleasures, back in the 10th century, came to the area to make homes in the caves up high in the rocks. They had to learn how to rock climb from the locals, but eventually created these sanctuaries and grouped together with other hermits, leading to the creation of the monasteries.

Once arriving in Crete we hired a taxi and went to our hotel, Kronos Hotel. After quickly settling in we went for lunch, and made our way to the bus station to take a 20 minute bus to one of the local beaches, Arita Sand. We spent most of the day there, until about 7pm, with me listening to Harry Potter on audio book, and Lindsay reading The Undomestic Goddess and then made our way back to the hotel to shower and head out for dinner. It was relaxing time after a long start to the day.

On Top of the World

It seems as though we never get to sleep in with all that we have planned, but at least we are enjoying everything!

We woke up around 7 and went out for breakfast.  On our way, we stopped in at a tour company, www.VisitMeteora.travel, and booked a Sunset Tour for the night, running from 5-9pm.  For breakfast we stopped at a small bakery just down the road from our hotel, Rooms Totti Sisters, and grabbed a couple Greek pastries and iced coffees.  Funny enough, at the bakery we went to, the lady who owns it demonstrated really good English, and when she asked where we were from we said Canada, and she said she lived there for 15 years, in British Columbia.  We told her we lived there too, in a small town called Prince George, and she was quite excited because she actually lived in PG for the 15 years she was there!  She lived right near Alward and 10th, so it was fun to chat with her.

We then went back to the hotel, packed up, and took the car up to Meteora and the first monastery.  There are 6 monasteries now, (there used to be 24) and all of them are active and in use.  They are beautifully situated on cliffs, with long stairwells carved into the mountains, although those were only recently added; until about 90 years ago you had to be pulled up by a pulley system, which is still in use to bring up supplies.

The hike to these monasteries was often a lot of steps, some of them as many as 300 steps, going down a valley, and up the other side, and of course these were very steep walks, and very tiring.  Also, as they are functioning monasteries, woman have to wear long skirts, and men long pants, so both Lindsay and I were cooling off in the AC'd car after each one, trying to prepare ourselves for the next.

We actually only made it to 4 of the monasteries - 1 of the six was closed, and 1 we ran out of time for.  We started the day a little later than we wanted to, and as we wanted to rest and write our blog before our sunset tour, we didn't make it to the last one.  Each one was beautiful in their own right, and there was some amazing history on display.  Along the road connecting the monasteries, (it is about 16km to hit all 6 of them) we stopped to grab a couple photos, showing how it looks and feels like the top of the world.

We are just about to head out on our sunset tour, so hopefully we will have a few more great photos later!