This will be our first winter with the window coverings we ordered in the spring. They should prevent intrusions of water from seasonal rainstorms. |
C.A.R.I.B. III - Chill And Relax It's Bargetime . . .
Monday, October 7, 2024
Closing Up and Hunkering Down
Friday, September 27, 2024
Stairways to Heaven
Our final few days in Greece took us to the central mainland of the country, as far as the northwestern edge of the Plain of Thessaly. When Lon was doing his research into Greece and what he might want to include in an itinerary, he was fascinated by the pictures that he saw of monasteries built on the top of pillar-like rock formations in the area known as Meteora. It is at least a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Athens to Meteora, so the main question was how it would fit into our visits to the other places that were finding their way onto our "we want to include this" list. In the end, the solution turned out to be quite simple. Meteora has become the second most visited mainland tourist attraction in Greece, surpassed only by the Acropolis. With this kind of popularity, and with us having decided that we wanted to leave the driving to other people, it was no problem to find companies willing and able to sell us a tour package that would leave from, and return to, Athens. It's possible to do a day trip to Meteora from Athens, but a 12 or 13-hour experience, spent mostly on a bus, held no appeal at all. We settled on a 4-day/3-night package that gave us 2 hotel nights in Meteora, and on our way back to Athens, a one-night stop in the ancient Greek "center of the world," Delphi. It was a much more leisurely prospect, and I really enjoyed being able to leave most of the trip arrangements with someone else.
With an 8 a.m. departure from the Athens rail station on Saturday morning, September 14, we were up bright and early. Up until September 2023 the package would have included a train ride from Athens to Kalambaka, one of the towns adjacent to Meteora, but bad floods in Greece last year damaged a portion of the railroad track that has yet to be fixed, so vans and buses are the alternative for all current tours. We were happy to find ourselves on a small-size bus that accommodated only about 20 passengers, rather than on one of several much larger buses that were also heading to Meteora that day.
A drive or walk among the rocks presents ever-changing, otherworldly views. |
Beginning in the 14th century, a different type of monk arrived. They weren't interested in living the solitary life of a hermit monk, but sought a monastic life built around the idea of community. It was at this point that the big monasteries began to be built. The construction challenges were enormous. Until the 16th century, the "stairways to heaven" were, in fact, wooden ladders. The 16th century "advancement" in moving people and goods upward was a net attached to a winch mechanism contained within a tower at the monastery entrance. Fortunately for us--and the millions of annual Meteora visitors--we didn't have to swing from a net to access the monasteries but could use the staircases that were built after WWII.
In this "overview view", three of the active monasteries are visible, one at the lower left quadrant, and two in the upper right quadrant. |
The Holy Trinity Monastery. Founded in the 14th C, abandoned in the early 20th C, but re-opened after renovation. The monastery appears in the 1981 James Bond film, "For Your Eyes Only." |
The Holy Monastery of Saint Nicholas has the lowest elevation of any of the monasteries, and may have served as a resting place for those continuing on to the other monasteries. |
The Holy Monastery of Roussanou. It is one of the two convents in Meteora. |
The Holy Monastery of Varlaam, the second biggest monastery of Meteora. |
The Monastery of Great Meteoron, the largest and the oldest of the six. We visited this monastery as part of our hiking tour. |
Just a portion of the staircase leading up to the entrance of the Great Meteoron. It was a busy day for visitors, perhaps not unusual for a Sunday. |
You can just see the Monastery of Varlaam between us. It wasn't far from the Great Meteoron, just the "next big rock over." |
The Holy Monastery of Ypapanti, first established in the 14th century, was fully constructed inside a rock cavity. It had been renovated, but is now abandoned. |
The simple pleasures: in exchange for the bits of chicken I brought back from restaurants, or a breakfast sausage, this adorable kitten consented to spend time on my lap purring and sleeping. |
After our two days in Meteora with its miles and miles of walking, including some serious changes in altitude up to Meteora hilltops and back down again, on September 14 we were whisked by private transport to the town of Delphi. The route was primarily on two lane roads and was stunningly beautiful at times. We again had a short stop in Thermopylae, but by lunchtime we were at our hotel. It was too early to check in, but we could leave the luggage, go to lunch, and visit the archeological site in Delphi.
On the approach to the museum and the archeological sites. |
Looking at the ancient Delphi site from a perspective near the site entrance. There was going to be a lot of "up" involved in wandering the site. |
A portion of the omphalos--the navel of the world, the symbol that Delphi was the center of the universe. |
In legend, the Sibyl Rock was that from which the earliest high priestess of Delphi proclaimed her prophecies. |
Fun and (athletic) games were all part of the Delphi experience. At the highest point to which we could climb was this stadium at which the contests were held. |
From the heights of the Apollo sanctuary in Delphi can be seen the ruins of the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia (lower-level, mid-photo). |
The circular temple, a tholos, at the site of the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, less than a mile east of the main ruins in Delphi. |
Several restaurants in Delphi had views to the Gulf of Corinth, including the place we had dinner to finish out our day. |
Tuesday, September 17, was essentially an all-day travel day for us and immersion in the joys of public transportation. Late morning we caught an intercity bus from Delphi that took us to one of the bus stations in Athens. We managed to find the bus stop--thank goodness for directions from a helpful bus driver--from which to catch the express bus to the Athens Airport, and then took a local bus to the nearby town where our accommodations waited. Finding the perfect "night before flight" place to stay is always a challenge, and this place was just OK, but at least it was only a 10-minute drive from the airport and the owner of the apartment we stayed at provided the service (for a fee, of course). The remainder of the return to the boat in Auxonne was fine--the flight to Paris and the subsequent trains operated perfectly.
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
City States
After one last leisurely breakfast drinking in the view from the terrace of the Amfitriti Palazzo, we turned the rental car north towards Athens on Wednesday, September 11. Because the rental car wasn't due at the airport until 2 p.m., we had time for a stop along the way at the site of the ancient city of Corinth.
After 800 BC, following the collapse of the Mycenean civilization around 1200 BC and the subsequent Greek "Dark Ages", the city-state, consisting of an urban center and the surrounding countryside, developed as the unit of the community structure of ancient Greece. Ultimately, there were over one thousand city-states with their ever-shifting alliances, but the "Big 3" were Athens, the world's first known democracy and a center of education and art; militaristic Sparta; and Corinth, a thriving port city and center of trade and commerce on the isthmus that bridged the Peloponnesian Peninsula and central Greece. Corinth had its heyday in the 5th and 6th centuries BC, was destroyed by Romans in the 2nd C BC, and was rebuilt under Julius Caesar in the mid-1st C BC to become the capitol of Roman Greece. Present-day Corinth is a small city about 3 miles distant from ancient Corinth.
Archeological excavations of the ancient site of Corinth began in 1896, conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and are ongoing. We very much enjoyed our visit to the site. It was as fascinating in its way as Mycenae, but might not be as well-known on the tourism circuit, because the number of visitors was decidedly less at Corinth than what we had seen at Mycenae.
The archeology museum at ancient Corinth had a wonderful mix of finds from the Greek, Byzantine, and Roman eras. |
The ornate architectural style known as the "Corinthian order" is named for the city of Corinth. Whether it actually originated in the city is not completely clear. |
Corinth is part of Saint Paul's Cultural Route. In one of his trips to Corinth, Paul spent a year and a half (in 51-52 AD) working as a tent maker and preaching in the city. |
On to Athens then.
The coastal road had a few tunnels. |
The display cabinets in the Panepistimiou station, which was closest to our apartment in Athens, contain various grave goods recovered from a series of excavations near the metro station. |
Another spread out site with lots of foundations. |
A view over the agora from the Temple of Hephaestus. The hill of the Acropolis is at upper right. |
Finding our way to various sites meant dealing with tourist crowds along this street lined with restaurants and shops. |
The not-so-fun part: managing steps and crowds to access the very top of the Acropolis hill. |
We spotted this offset chunk of column on the way out. Perhaps there needs to be some scaffold in its future. |
Upper: Panathenaic Stadium being prepped for an event. Yes, we did climb up to the very last row. Lower: The stadium in 1896. |
Passageway for athletes and to access a small museum. |
The stadium is the last venue in Greece for the handover of the Olympic flame to the host nation. At center, the Olympic cauldron used in this ceremony in Athens. |
The Olympic torches and other memorabilia from various Olympic games. |
The fancy and oft-times familial . . . |
. . . and some which have seen better days. |
Food photos aren't usually my "thing", but I loved the salads in Greece so much. France, I like you a lot, but you could learn a thing or two about salads from the Greeks. |
Lycabettus Hill from below. It also shows up in the previous photo in this posting that was taken from Areopagus Hill. |
It's all about the views. Had we walked up the hill, we would undoubtedly have looked totally wilted. |
Upper: the view of Athens with the Acropolis. Lower: Zooming in on the Acropolis. |