Meteora and Mt. Olympus

Meteora

We drove to Meteora early in the morning so we would get there before any busses or crowds. When we arrived, everything was still, quiet, and profoundly peaceful.

Climbing the stairs to the Varlaam Monsestary.
This is the basket that used to haul people up. My dad used to talk about Meteora a lot and it was fun to see the baskets he referenced in his stories.

Here is a video Abe made from the Varlaam monastery:

Next we walked up to the Grand Monestary of Meteora.
Our favorite part of this monestary was the old kitchen, but we forgot to take a picture!
We didn’t eat breakfast and Clarissa was on the verge of mutiny, so we came down to the town to eat lunch. The waiter kindly took our picture (and posed us to boot!).

Mt. Olympus

After Meteora we headed to Mt. Olympus. We wanted to see it mainly because of its role in Greek myths; we had no idea that the mountain would be anything special. But we were so wrong. I fear our pictures could never do this mountain justice! It was the most beautiful mountain Abe and I had ever seen. The whole road up and down the mountain we all kept essentially screaming in surprise at all of the vistas and colors. We also so five foxes (at five different times!). The fifth fox was being fed by people in their car so that is probably why so many were by the side of the road, but still it was fun to see them!

I changed the filter on this picture in an attempt to evoke the same magical feelings we all had on the mountain. We were in awe the whole time.
Look at those lacy, glowing leaves.
Ammon loved all of the moss.
This picture comes close to showing a little of what we experienced in certain sections of the road. Although I took this on the hike, on the road there were entire sections where the trees on both sides looked like this and the whole top of the road was covered with these glowing, amber leaves. It was incredible.
On the other side of that wall is a sheer cliff to the bottom of the gorge. We did not let Ammon or Clarissa out of the car here. Lydia looks slightly apprehensive at the cliff.

After Mt. Olympus we all rode down to the town at the base of the mountain and ate pasta, pizza, Greek salad, and ice cream. Then we got back into the car and I put “Sarakina” into the GPS. Our farm house was in a little village called “Sarakina,” so I imagined that would be sufficient.

That is why at 10pm at night we found ourselves driving on unlit roads in the middle of country nowhere. We still thought we were close to our village because it was also in the middle of nowhere, but when the road got so narrow and steep that we had to back up and turn around, I double checked the GPS.

Imagine the shock when I realized we were 45 minutes from the Bulgaria border and honestly not that much farther to Turkey. Our Sarakina (or Sarakinas, as it turned out) was three and a half hours southwest. Oops. Poor Abe had to drive almost until 2am that night. Luckily we had great audiobooks (Michael Pollan’s Second Nature and Stephen Fry’s Troy) and good music to keep him going. It turned out to be a really fun night in at least one other respect because we got to talk a lot to each other without interruption. That is always a treat.

Also (Abe interjecting here), there is one anecdote that I want to make sure we share. I’m not sure if it was today or another day after Naxos, but the kids have been using their devices a ton while we drive. It keeps them completely quiet, and they love it and we love it (the quiet, so we can listen to our Stephen Fry audiobook on Troy). One day we were driving, and Clarissa spontaneously (or so we thought) burst into tears. Her sobs were desperate like her dog just died or something. We asked Clarissa what was wrong and in a completely distraught voice she wailed, “My ipad died!”. She really does love that ipad. I’ve even heard her call it her “Ipaddy”.

Also, here are a bunch of other videos from the day:

Here is what Mary captured in her travel journal about today: