Destination: Education: Meteora

The day after Christmas is Second Day of Christmas in Greece, and is considered a public holiday. We knew there wouldn't be a lot of places open, so our itinerary had us driving to Meteora, a UNESCO heritage site and the home of the cliff-tip monasteries. In Greek, Meteora means 'suspended in the air.' Yes my friends, these genius monks built their monasteries on top of giant cliffs roughly around the 14th century.

We drove around yet another supremely curvy road that wound through the hills and just enjoyed the view. We stopped for many pictures, and even managed to tour one the day we arrived! The next morning we woke up early for breakfast and went back to tour St. Stephen's, as it was home to some amazing frescoes. Unfortunately, there were no pictures allowed of the frescoes, so I can't share them with you. I guess if you want to see them you'll have to take a little trip :)

A view of a monastery or two from our hotel balcony.


The view of the first monastery we saw from the road below. It's called: The Holy Monastery of Saint Nicholas Anapausas. We stopped here on the morning of the 27th on our way out of town to see the frescoes.


See those ropes? That's how the monks used to get their food up into the monasteries. It's also how they got themselves up into the monasteries. Apparently, they only replaced the ropes when they broke. I'd hate to find out the ropes needed replacement the hard way!

A bell on top of the monastery.

The Holy Monastery of St. Stephen.

View of Agios Stephanos

See those cables? They're the only way to get to that particular monastery from what we could tell. They had a little boxcar-like thing that traveled on the rope to carry their supplies and people...