So Trikala is a nice town. Busy cafe bars, a grocery store, laid back hostel with good WiFi, and overall a good place for me to spend 3 nights and relax. I even got my laundry done, which makes me so happy. There were a couple people there the first night but they left and no one was going to Meteora that day, I decided to chill out a day and see if anyone came to go tomorrow. And 3 people did!

The next day I set out to the Meteora monasteries with two French Canadians and one (regular?) Canadian. Took a taxi to the top and hiked through everything for about 3 hours. A bunch of them were closed, but we were able look inside one of them (but no pictures allowed), and the views were really nice throughout the journey. It was a beautiful day for it, so we were only moderately worried about getting struck by lightning. Here are the pictures I took.

The monastery closed when we were in there and the gate locked us in. Just as I had come to terms with my new life as a monk, they came out and let us out.

Then we sat around and had some coffee at the bottom before taking a bus back to Trikala.

I got a fancy ice cream that night, pistachio something, and it was pretty good. Took a nice stroll among the leaves along the Litheos River on my way to the bus station, where I grabbed a bus to Athens.

Athens is an actual city, with actual city things, which is nice. I bought some fast food I could actually eat – a veggie pita and a cheese pizza slice, so I’ve carbed up again.

I walked up to the Acropolis, but everyone was on strike. Figures. So I walked up the overlook next to it for the day and took a picture of the things.

I spent the better part of the day wandering around as well. There are random ruined things around. Also, I went through the flea markets, Placa, and the other interesting things around there.

I’ll do some more Athens when I get back.

My flight the next morning was at 7am, so I had to get up at like 4am to take a bus to the airport. That didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. After a couple hours of sleep I did all that. Also, I left most of my luggage in a locker in Athens and just took a day bag to Sandorini to save on luggage fees. So now I’m off to an island!