How does one describe Meteora. This area was not even a speck of a thought when we first headed to Greece, but the more local people we met, the more people were telling us, “You must visit Meteora!” We had purposefully left this portion of our trip unplanned knowing that the time of year would allow us more freedom to make last minute plans and hoping that this exact thing would happen, people would tell us where to visit. Meteora is about 5 hours outside Athens and almost 3 hours past Delphi, so it was tailor made for our trip with our own car.
Meteora is a beautiful place where monks built monasteries high in the mountains, thus close to heaven and safer from intruders.
Before the churches were built, the holy men lived as hermits in area’s hundreds of shallow caves. In the 14th century they started building using wooden ladders and a rope system to raise and lower themselves from the peaks.
There are still six active monasteries in the area, four are for men and two are female nunneries. We were able to visit three of the monasteries, including both nunneries.
It was a grey and rainy weekend for our visit, but that didn’t detract from the majesty that the place invoked.
What an amazing place! We chuckled about you and Aleah having to wear skirts because when we visited the monastery in Akrotiri (Santorini) in 1975, all 4 of us; Jane, Tony, Dick and I, had to donn their “skirts”….burlap bags…..because we were all wearing shorts!