Meteora

Day Four, Meteora:

Our final stop was at the site of Meteora, just outside of the town of Kalambaka. Meteora is a group of monasteries that were built on top of isolated monoliths by a group of monks looking to create a "community of hermits" (no, that doesn't make sense to us, either), starting around the year 1000 AD. When these were originally built, the only access was via a bucket and pulley system. Fortunately there are bridges and staircases, today.

Overall the coach trip was worth going on. We saw sites that we never would have otherwise seen and had full explanations at every stop. The bad part was the bus itself, which can't be anyone's favourite way to travel. We were lucky that the bus wasn't full and that we could each have our own row (we tried sitting together, but one of us is content to gaze serenely out the window at the countryside and the other one is a fidgety galoot). We didn't think that we could go the entire tour with the same clothes and no luggage, but we made it!