We woke up early in the morning, as the tour departed at 8am. I ended up contracting a tour for this Meteora trip, as they had a great 2 day package including transportation, hotel, and meals. After looking several days, I ended up finding a website with lots of tours for Greece, good prices in US dollar.
The whole morning was dedicated to Meteora, what an amazing place. We visited a couple of monasteries. Originally, there were about 26, but only 6-7 remain. Initially, I thought that visiting only two was too little, but this seems to be enough.
The first monastery to visit is Megalo Meteoro, the biggest and oldest one.... just try to figure out how the built all these monasteries, by using ropes to lift the construction materials. The first constructions started around 1400, but there was neither road, step, bridge to this place until 1800s. In old times, up to 300 monks used to leave here. Currently, only about 20-30 monks can be found.
The whole morning was dedicated to Meteora, what an amazing place. We visited a couple of monasteries. Originally, there were about 26, but only 6-7 remain. Initially, I thought that visiting only two was too little, but this seems to be enough.
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| Meteora |
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| Meteora |
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| Great Meteoro |
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| Great Meteoro |
The first monastery to visit is Megalo Meteoro, the biggest and oldest one.... just try to figure out how the built all these monasteries, by using ropes to lift the construction materials. The first constructions started around 1400, but there was neither road, step, bridge to this place until 1800s. In old times, up to 300 monks used to leave here. Currently, only about 20-30 monks can be found.
The second monastery visited is St. Stephen, for nuns only
After the visits, the tour stopped for lunch and later drove 5 hours back to Athens (with a couple of small breaks on the way).
They dropped us at Syntagma square, where we took the Metro to the airport. Since the flight departed at 8:15am and we would have to be there at 6:15am for an international flight, it looked better to try to sleep at an airport business lounge, rather than staying at an hotel for a few hours. By the time we got there (after 9pm), the airline had closed and we didn't have a way of checking in to go through security into the lounge! Fortunately, free wi-fi is available at the airport , but just for 60 minutes, and we could go through security by showing the boarding pass on the laptop screen. I would recommend making online check in and printing the boarding pass before hand. It took me a while to get the whole thing done.
Last year, I signed to a promotion from Priority Pass which gives world wide Lounge access. The plan was to spend the (few hours left from the) night in the lounge, avoiding paying one day of hotel and having to wake up at 4am, and find transportation to get into the airport. Priority Pass charged $54 for two people (this is going to be billed to the credit card associated to the account, no payment is due when entering the lounge).
Only two lounges, both from Olimpic Airlines but serving other companies as well, are open 24 hours: Aristotle Onassis Lounge and Melina Merkouri Lounge. Aristotle Onassis Lounge is closer to British Airways, which was going to take us back home. This lounge doesn't have shower, offers drinks and snacks (cookies, sandwich). But at this point, we mainly wanted to sleep on the Sofa (they are small, but can put two together in a row).
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