Wednesday, 17th July 2019
After spending two weeks recuperating from our extensive road trip and relaxing in Saronida, we are ready to hit the road again, home bound!
In Saronida our daily way of life was so easy going, in the morning going down to the baker’s shop and buying fresh bread and croissants so that we could have breakfast on the front terrace overlooking the bay of Saronida and immediately below the bougainvilleas abundantly splashed with various shades of purple.
Breakfast consisted of fresh watermelon chunks with halloumi cheese for me, Greek yoghurt with fruit, walnuts and honey for Gerry as well as a couple of slices of bread with goats cheese and sometimes both of us would have a croissant.
We spent most of our time in Saronida walking down to the beach below the house or going to the beach club Mavro Lethari. It was amazing to swim in the lukewarm sea and even though we relaxed under a sun shade, we did manage to get a healthy tan – Gerry is actually very tanned and it’s a good job he had his swimming trunks in; we can see the difference between the colour of his own skin and the rest of his tanned body…….. am sure his (grand)children will be enormously jealous of him……. we also spent time reading, playing scrabble (in Dutch and Gerry won more games than I did!) and backgammon. I sometimes cooked a meal which consisted of Greek salad and pasta with loads of roasted vegetables – when it was Gerry’s turn to cook, we went out for dinner…….
At the end of last week, we started planning our road trip back home. I had read about the Meteora – a region in north central Greece with monasteries dating back to the 14th century perching on massive pillars of sandstone rock. As we were planning to drive through Thessaloniki, we made a detour to include this impressive UNESCO heritage site and stay overnight.
Once we had cleaned the house and done the laundry (which was immediately dry outdoors in the back yard), Gerry locked up the house and we were ready to leave Saronida at midday.
Our first stop was in Annavyssos where I topped up my Vodafone internet card and got cash out of the ATM . BY 13.00 we were well on our way. According to the TomTom navigation system, we would be driving 383km and would be arriving at our hotel at 17.10 – a good four hour drive…….
Once we were away from the Athens, there was hardly any traffic on the motorways – understandable as the tolls are quite expensive but also with the population only being around 10 million, there is hardly any traffic; hence Gerry clocked over 170km per hour – we have agreed should he have been caught by one of the speed cameras, he will have to pay the fine himself……..We drove through the fertile plains of Thessaly and although interesting to see the vegetable and fruit garden of Greece, it was somewhat monotonous after a while and were happy to see the outlines of mountains getting closer.
We were ecstatic with our first glimpse of the mountains and rock formation which all of a sudden rose in front of us that we had to stop the car to take a couple fo pictures. However much later after driving through the stupendous rock formations, we were really awestruck!
I have seen the rock formation similar to Meteora in Vietnam and in Cuba, but Meteora is very special with monasteries perching on top of huge pillars of sandstone rock……..
So in stead of heading on to our hotel, we seemed to have gathered enough energy to go sightseeing. The winding road outside the village of Kastraki led us up the mountain range and with every bend I wanted to stop and take pictures.
At the end of the 14th century, Byzantine empire in northern Greece was being threatened by the Turkish raiders who wanted to take over the fertile plains; hence the monks who did not want to be included in the fighting sough their refuge and solitude up on these huge pillars of rock and gradually built their monasteries. Originally there were some 24 monasteries but nowadays there are 6 left over which are functioning and have between them a population of 100 monks and nuns – 4 monasteries occupied by monks and two by nuns.
After our tour, we finally arrived at our hotel, Dhoupiani House – named after the rock where the monks who lived a life of solitude met at a chapel built at the door of a rock called Dhoupiani on Sundays or special feast days.
This is a family run hotel and very pretty in a classical way. Our balcony looks over Meteora – once we settled in, we walked down to the village for dinner at a place recommended by the receptionist, Taverna Bakaliarakia. She also told us that it was not far to walk, however as we walked down hill through the main road, we thought we had to walk uphill in the way back…… however our waiter pointed us to a short cut but even then being so dark on the way back and me being quite adamant that I knew the way, we ended up walking just as much but at least we avoided the steep hill with cars on the road…..
By the time we arrived back at the hotel, we were dead tired…… time for bed! Looking forward to tomorrow when we visit one of the nunneries before starting our drive to Nea Plagia, some 100 km south of Thessaloniki.
