Going up to the Holy Monastery of the Great Meteoron The Tsikeli Hotel Meteora included an excellent, elaborate breakfast buffet. As I already mentioned, today the pillars were shrouded in heavy fog or low clouds. If the clouds had been lower and the monasteries had risen above them, it could have been spectacular, but as it was, we could barely see the monasteries even when right next to them. It was a bit disappointing, but we had many days of beautiful weather during our trip and this was the only day the weather genuinely reduced our experience. Five of the monasteries were open this day and we were going to visit 4, starting with Holy Monastery of the Great Meteoron, which began in 1356 and slowly grew over the years. Today there are 9 monks living here whose ages span 27 to early 90s. There have only been stairs to go to the monasteries since about 1925 when they started being a tourist attraction and gained a new income stream. All of the monasteries have a rigid dress code for visitors, requiring women to have long skirts and men long trousers. All must have their shoulders and arms covered. Linda had brought along a skirt to slip on over her jeans, but wrap-around skirts were available at the entrances. With the heavy fog and occasional showers, her skirt was soon damp.
We went on to the Holy Monastery of Saint Varlaam, which opened in 1514, has 7 monks and was a much easier climb. Each monastery has a museum and gift shop. In both of the men's monasteries, all the people working there who we encountered were employees.
The third was Holy Monastery of Saint Stephen, which opened in the 14th Century and was converted to a nunnery in 1961. There are 31 nuns and some of them were selling the tickets and working in the gift shop. It is the most accessible of the monasteries.
Holy Monastery of Rousanos - Saint Barbara began in the 16th Century and is also a convent. Dimitris dropped us off above Saint Barbara and we took a long, narrow, steep path down the mountain to it, only to find it was closed. From there we were able to continue down a much shorter distance to the parking area where he was waiting. He had confused which day of the week it was and it is closed on Wednesday.
It was time to be getting on our way, and we drove down to Kalabaka, a large community a little farther from the stone pillars, and had lunch at Restaurant-Taverna Panellinion, before our 4 hour drive back to Athens. As we left town, the fog by the monasteries was lighter and we took some photos on the way out of town.
We returned to the Hotel Ivy Suites and checked into the 6th floor Ivy Suite. We were the only suite on this floor, with a slightly better view and a little more comfortable layout. Supper was at Symposio Restaurant, a few minutes walk from the hotel. We had a light supper of feta rolls and calamari stuffed with metsovone cheese & Florini pepper. We had one of our few desserts with a meal, a Banoffee with Bailey's flavored cream, salted caramel, banana and vanilla ice cream.
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