Apart from our frequent food tours, I find that I am generally reluctant to go on tours. When we do though, I almost always find we’ve gotten more out the experience, so we really should do it more often. I knew I wanted to go for a hike in Meteora, but after some googling it didn’t seem like there were many reliable walking maps and forum posts seemed to indicate the trails were not particularly well-marked. We ended up going on a very affordable and enjoyable walking tour with a diverse group from Singapore, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK.
Before there were monasteries, hermits lived in caves in Meteora as early as the 9th century AD. They lived a mostly solitary existence and only socialized with the other hermits on Sundays and special holidays. The monasteries were not built until the 14th century, when the monks began to consolidate in small groups on the tops of the rocks in order to protect themselves from the Turkish invaders. At its peak Meteora had 20 monasteries; there are only six left today. In the above photo you can see the remains of a tower in the lower left and walls in the middle of the photo.
The trail went into a beautiful valley where the shepherds grazed their herds. We heard a shepherd whistling to his herd; one of the ladies on our tour kept whistling back at him. I’m sure she confused both the shepherd and the sheep because they came clamoring up the hill toward us to see what was happening, and then retreated once they realized it was just a group of tourists.
In the middle of this empty field, we came across this humble marker. This used to be the site of the central church of Kalabaka, but the town was moved brick by the brick to the other side of the rocks in order to be better concealed from the Ottoman Army. Nowadays you would never know there was a village here.
We were relieved that most of the walk was through a shaded forest, as neither of us had the presence of mind to pack hats or sunglasses and the sun was pretty bright. Once we emerged from the forest we got a peak of this lovely monastery tucked into the cliffside. Monks don’t live here anymore, and it’s not open to the public. It’s only accessible by hiking in, so even when it was open it probably wasn’t visited as heavily as the others.
We stopped at a big broad outcropping and our guides handed out these delicious treats which had almonds, sesame seeds, chocolate, and honey. Though they look kind of like an American Chewy bar, they had a nice satisfying crunch and were not cloyingly sweet. On the other side, the honey was pooled and solidified. As I am a lover of all things delicious and an avid recipe collector, I had to know what these things were called so I could replicate them myself at home. Our guides said they were called “Baguettas.” I couldn’t find any thing online by that name, and when I asked our guide during the food tour if she knew what they were, she guessed that they must have been pasteli. They look like pasteli but most of the pasteli I have had are chewy not crunchy, and they don’t usually have the nice chocolate bits that this version had. The search will continue because I could eat these things basically everyday, they were really amazing…
Above is the ruins of the Monastery of Ayios Dimitrios. It was destroyed after the Ottoman army shelled in an attempt to root out Greek insurgents. Though they succeeded in destroying the monastery they failed to capture the insurgents, who escaped. Their escape is particularly miraculous when you consider they were basically trapped on top of a huge rock that was surrounded by the Ottomans.
At the end of of tour we went to visit the largest of the monasteries, Megalo Meteoro or the Great Meteora Monastery. This was basically the Disneyland of Meteora monasteries; it was absolutely destroyed with Russian and Bulgarian tour groups.
We bought our fridge magnet here to add to our growing collection. While we stopped to browse the selection, we got to see the monastery’s cable car in action. Without the cable car getting up to the monastery involves lots of stairs; this way the monks can drive right up the road to the cable car to resupply.
We had an incredible view of the neighboring Varlaam Monastery on our way up:
The double headed eagle is a symbol of Eastern Orthodox churches:
It might be easy to miss good ole Pythagorus and Socrates among the religious figures, but they have a place of honor in the monastery as well:
This propaganda poster says “Out of Greece!” and shows a Greek soldier dressed in the evzona uniform stabbing the hand of a Nazi. The Greeks (among many others!) did not like the Nazis. In both Greece and Cyprus, October 28 is “Oxi Day” which celebrates the Greek Prime Minister telling Mussolini the Axis powers could not occupy Greece. According to popular legend, he told the Italians “Oxi!” (The Greek word for “No.”) In reality, the Prime Minister’s response was “Alors, c’est la guerre!” (“Then it is war!”) Two hours later the Italians rolled in and occupied all of Greece.
You should all have realized by now that for a heathen I am pretty obsessed with old churches. I just love the little details, like this stone carving. It’s such a little thing but it probably took someone hours to carve such neat clean letters into that stone…
