Meteora

We left Delphi yesterday by bus and had to transfer a ton of times. We finally arrived here in Meteora at 9:00 pm, it was raining and we got confused about how to get to our hotel. This was kind of a low travel moment, but once we found our hotel and got some dinner everyone felt much better.

Meteora is known for its monasteries that were built on huge rocks that have been forming for millions of years. The geology of these rocks is not completely understood, but it is believed that they started forming underwater and when the water receded they got eroded by wind and other forces. Today they are humongous rocks rising up to 400m with moss covered tops. They have curved edges from the erosion and black coloring on the sides.

Sitting atop and on the sides of these huge rocks are monasteries originally built in the 14th century when monks were looking for a place to be safe during the Turkish invasion of Greece. When they first built them there were about twenty four and today only six are being used. Today we went up to those monasteries and the view was really, well actually not much of a view because it was blocked by fog. I was kind of happy because it's a really far drop and I am scared of heights so it's good I couldn't see the ground. After awhile the fog burned off and we could see the drop, yay, along with the beautiful view, but who cares about that. Okay - I did think it was beautiful.

The six monasteries still being used have been refurbished and added on to with new technology. At the second monastery we went visited they had scaffolding on the edge of the rock where they were doing some construction, something I could never do. In the same place where monks used to get pulled up in nets there was a big metal cable and pulley for hoisting construction materials. The monasteries used to be reached by ladder but later they put in windlasses so monks could be pulled up in a net.