The long-awaited trip to Meteora went down this weekend.  We left on a train (my first time riding a passenger train!) on Friday morning at 8:20 in the morning.  Because we waited so long to buy tickets, the only tickets available were first class, so we rode our 4.5 train ride up into the mountains in style!  The ride didn’t seem that long, probably because we all dozed off a little bit.  We arrived in the town of Kalambaka/Kalampaka, which was nestled right next to the Meteoran rocks.  There was another town down the road, Kastraki, which was even closer to the site of Meteora, but it was more expensive, so we made our way to our little hostel/hotel, Alsos Rooms, which truly was a hop, skip and a jump away from a footpath leading up into the mountains.

To provide a little background information, Meteora is full of these huge rock formations and no one knows the geological history of them.  No one knows how they got that way, basically.  Years and years and years ago, the monks who lived in Mount Athos (famous monastery area in Greece where women are STILL not allowed into today due to their “unclean” nature) migrated over to Meteora and established a number of monasteries high up on the rocks.  So not only were we traveling here to see the awesome landscape, we were also here to view these monasteries that defied gravity and teetered on the tips of the cliffs.

We were a larger group of eight, which seemed like it was going to be a problem, but we eventually split up, which made each group more manageable.  The first day we hung out in Kalampaka, since we were told by our friendly hotel owner that trying to get up into the monasteries anytime after 3:00-3:30 in the afternoon would be a tough feat.  We grabbed some lunch at a cute little tavern and wandered throughout the Old Town.  That night, my friends Ryan, Tina and I hiked up the dark road to the town of Kastraki looking for more adventure while the five of them stayed behind in Kalampaka.  We didn’t find any nightlife, but we did find the most awesome ceramic shop ever.  It was run solely by this one female artist, who was there, taking pieces out of her giant kiln as we looked through all her pieces.  I spent a good chunk of cash there, and we headed back to Kalampaka.  We stumbled upon our friends eating pizza at a pizzeria, but the three of us decided to go to a more traditional taverna where we indulged in stuffed tomatoes and peppers, briam (a kind of vegetables, eggplant, and potatoes in red sauce dish), lamb and chicken.  Bed was a welcome relief that night, although I ended up having to share a tiny double with my best pal Jessica (Jay-Z), and we’re pretty sure we were spooning the entire night.  I guess that’s the sign of a close friendship?

Breakfast came included with our 20 euro student fee at the Alsos House, which turned out to mean we had access to the place’s kitchen and any of the food there.  The owner bought two loaves of bread and two cartons of milk for us that morning.  Determined to make sure that everyone would start off the day right (I was way too overly concerned with everyone’s well-being for the first half of the trip), I proceeded to brew coffee, boil hot water for tea, and toast up some cheese toast using the bread, butter, and a bag of shredded cheese found in the refrigerator.  I burned the bread a little bit, but I think everyone appreciated my efforts.

The five who split off the following day were going to try to head back to Athens on a bus in the early afternoon.  I personally thought that trekking all the way up to Meteora to leave at 2 or 3 in the afternoon wasn’t worth the money, so I planned to leave either on the 5:30pm train that evening or the 6:30am train the following morning depending on what time I got back from the monasteries.  Ryan and Tina agreed with me, so while the other five rented a taxi or two to take them up to the top of the rocks, my two companions and I hiked up the footpath near our hotel into the canyon.  We must have seemed an odd trio (Tina is actually 42 years old, is a mother with a husband and is currently finishing her B.A.  But despite this, she never once tried to be a “mother,” nor did she try to be “young and hip” like us while we were hiking.  I respect her immensely and hope that one day I will be able to find the kind of peace with myself that she has found within herself).

We stopped by monasteries and climbed rocks.  I mean… really climbed rocks.  There are some cliffs and ledges I ventured out to that I’m sure would make my friends and family cringe seeing me out there (at one point Tina even yelled up at me “I’m so sorry Bri, the mothering instinct is coming out in me. GET DOWN FROM THERE!”) We were planning on trekking the 9 kilometers from one end of the canyon to the other, but about halfway there, it started raining and we got picked up by a nice Greek couple who let us hitchhike with them to the main monastery, the Great Meteoran.  Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed inside or else I would have some spectacular monastery pictures to show for it.  I guess I will have to be content with the memories and the fact that my friends and family will never be able to see what I saw.  Let me just say, however, that the church in the Great Meteoran was spectacular.  The inside walls were plastered with these immensely detailed fresco paintings of biblical stories.  It looked like a comic book, almost… that’s the best way I can describe it.

Coming down from the mountains was another story.  We walked… and walked… and walked.  We found a footpath off the road that looked like it was washing away, and being the crazy ones that we were, we went off onto it.  The entire day we had a running joke of how we were in Middle Earth (as in Lord of the Rings), and I could have sworn on this path we were somewhere in the outskirts of the Shire on our way to the town of Bree.  Like me, Tina was a huge Tolkien fan, and we spoke in Lord of the Rings quotes all the way down to Kistraki.  We hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and by 3:00 in the afternoon now, I was absolutely famished and was complaining profusely about walking up hills.  Before I knew it, Ryan had picked me up and carried me the last quarter of a mile to a tavern, which had the best tasting food I have ever gorged myself on (hunger always makes food taste better, doesn’t it?).  Oh yes! I also saw a persimmon tree in someone’s yard! Yes, I’m a dork, but I was super excited about it!

Luckily we made it back to the train station by 5:00 p.m. so we could get our late train home.  As we were walking along the platform, we saw our five friends sitting in the train already waving at us.  We went inside and found out that due to miscommunication, they missed their 2:00 in the afternoon bus and miraculously got their money reimbursed.  So here they were.  We began and ended our adventure together.  We got into Athens around 10:30 that night, which meant getting back to my apartment by 11:15, which meant after telling my roommates about my adventure, I was eating dinner at midnight. Such is life in Greece, it seems.  I got to sneak in a call to Brendan that night, too, which allowed me to go to bed feeling all warm and fuzzy inside!

Sunday, I took it easy.  Cleaned my room, did some laundry, wandered around Plaka trying to buy more gifts for people.  I cooked potato leek soup Sunday night from scratch… without a recipe… using fresh ingredients purchased from the weekly Laiki (it’s getting cold now! It’s soup season!).  I also had a leftover cheese fondue package from weeks ago, so I melted that down, boiled some broccoli, cut some green peppers, chunked two loaves of bread and lay that out for fondue dipping.  Finally I made a green salad with balsamic dressing, cracked upon a chilled bottle of white wine and invited some friends over for dinner.  We had halvas, dried figs, and chocolate-covered baklava for dessert.  It was a perfect end to a perfect weekend.

Life is, as always, good here in the Mediterranean.