Visiting Meteora

Greece is a country of mountains and nearly each mountain that I climbed opened a great view towards the beauty of the region. Meteora is something special and completely something else.

While approaching these mountains you realize that they stand out. Their colour, shape and smooth structure conquer your attention. As Wikipedia says these huge rocks are composed of sand and conglomerate and you really can notice it. The curious thing is that you cannot really believe that they are hard till you touch them. The beauty of this natural phenomenon inspires you.

How to get there?

If you want to visit Meteora, you can easily drive either 2,5 hours (228 km) from Thessaloniki or 4 hours (352 km) from Athens.

Where to stay?

Right near the root of a mountain and 15-20 minutes in a any direction you can find nice villages and the town of Trikala.

I suppose that most of the tourists prefer to stay in Kalambaka, a village situated next to the mountains. There you can find different hotels and rooms to let. Unfortunately, we haven’t stayed there so I have no idea about the prices. However the place itself is really comfortable, the main road is full of cafes, Greek fast food services and souvenir shops. Everything looks really tidy and welcoming.

You also have a possibility to stay in the nearest town called Trikala. It’s nearly 20 minutes away and will also welcome you with nice looking hotels and polite and hospital citizens.

What to watch?

Meteora is a place, which attracts your attention itself. Only its view is worth coming. But if you want to have a culturally rich holiday, you can drive to 6 monasteries/convents that are situated there and get acquainted with their history, interesting facts about their construction and see really unusual icons that I have never seen before in my life.

Usually monasteries in Greece have a really nice view, the one that we got to disappointed me a little as the view towards it was much better than from the inside. The funniest thing was that the best spot was right next to the toilet entrance.

As most of the citizens of the village where we stayed told us, the nice thing was to go and watch Theopetra cave. As Wikipedia says, it contains “the records of two greatly significant cultural transitions: The replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans, and the later transition from hunter-gathering to farming after the end of the last Ice Age”. It seemed rather interesting … We checked the time when it should be open, but unfortunately the schedule didn’t really match with reality so we couldn’t see anything :’(

If you are interested in Greek culture, I would advice you to go to Trikala. It’s a really nice town to walk, to look at ancient houses, its old town, to sit in its taverns. The place is so small and comfortable that really reminds you of a touristic one. The town is divided into two parts by a small river and is connected by several bridges. The Central Bridge connects the central square with the Asclepius pedestrian zone. There you can see a monument to Asclepius (the god of medicine). Actually all the places of attraction are so close to each other that you can manage to watch them in 1 - 2 hours.

What I noticed while being in that town is that all the drivers stopped when we wanted to cross the street though it rarely happens in Greece, people were more polite than usual though I regard Greeks as a rather polite nationality in general. A lot of people rode bicycles. And another unusual thing was that more than a half of girls passing by were really slim there.

What to eat?

This topic is still a sore point for me. From the beginning we told to taste a Spatula, a desert made from nuts and cream. But some time later some of other friends told us that they didn’t like it and I became really suspicious. When I saw the full cake, I didn’t really like its appearance and I thought that it wouldn’t be so tasty, just another sweet thing. So we decided to buy just small cups with it instead of a full cake. It was our greatest mistake. This thing was so delicious that I still remember its marvelous taste.

Budget

If you go by car, just expect that you will pay for your petrol. And I would also remind you that lots of places are attended by tourists so the prices are a little bit higher than usual.