Well today we are off, and all i can say is i won't be coming back to Athens in this lifetime if i can help it. So far i have seen quite a few cities of the world and i believe that i am now quallified enough to say that Athens is probably one of the ugliest stinky crapholes anywhere in the world. Here dodginess is an artform proscribed to by shop owners and vagrants alike. For instance as i sit here, Eve went off to by a can of coke while she sat on the internet, so because she chose to sit here and drink it (whilst on the net and paying for it) IT WOULD COST 2 EURO!!! Now if she had decided to leave it would cost 1 euro. So we are talking about a 100% increase in price here. Bullshit is the only word i can use though my mind is overflowing with profanities.
Anyway in this squallid little arse end of the universe there are actually quite surprisingly a few things worth seeing. One of these being Meteora, which i used in the title of my last blog but forgot to write about. Meteora is actually unlike any other region in Greece and if you want to to just one place in mainland Greece this should be it. If you can arrange a flight bypassing Athens even better. Yes i know the Acropolis and all that other stuff is in Athens but seriously it's a lot to put up with just for that. If you have to do Athens try and make it a one day trip, you can seriously see everything this dirt brown pit of squallor has in that time.
Anyway back to Meteora. The hills here look like moulded clay and wind fluted crevasses. There are actually trees in this region that relieves the somewhat boring impression of parched landscape everywhere else. Kalambaka is the town that lies at the end of the train line from Athens. It only cost 10.90 Euro to get here so you should give it a try as thats pretty damn cheap and it really is worth it. A common mistake of a lot of people here is to sign up with a tour in Athens and go, don't do it. It's far cheaper to go there and see all the monastaries on the mountains at your own leisure. We got up late on our final day that we had decided to do the monasteries, so we go a taxi up to the Meteora Transfiguration Monastery, which is the highest one up there and hangs off a cliff with all the buildings built into the rock. If we had got a bus up there it would have cost 1 euro but with a taxi it was 6. Ayway it's still worth it, now the key here is to not be a lazy tourist and coach it to all the cathedrals, they are not far apart and it is a really pleasant downhill walk from Meteora all the way back to Kalambaka. It takes bugger all time and the view itself is worth it, plenty of great photo opportunities (which we took advantage off but i have failed to bring lol). Anyway i could wax lyrical about this region littering my blog with excessively flowery prose for quite some time, but i'm not going to do that. To sum it all up don't be a lazy bastard, go there and walk, god knows most fat tourists could do with a bit of bloody exercise.
