Meteora and Thessaloniki

We woke up in Kalambaka and and took a short drive to the monasteries of Meteora. Before leaving, I was able to FaceTime with Ken in the lobby, which was great. We had a decent breakfast (chocolate chip muffin again!) and another funny story. Last night, as I unpacked my suitcase, there was a strong smell of sweet pea. My shower gel wasn't closed all the way and spilled everywhere in my bag. I had to wring out my Vera Bradley bag for a good ten minutes. There was a lot of soap! So in the morning, I couldn't pack my Vera bag in my suitcase because it was still a little damp. Dad offered to carry my bag while I FaceTimed with Ken. Well, Dad got teased in the lobby by a bunch of other guys for carrying his "Vera" bag. He said it was mine, but they didn't believe him. It was funny. I later met the guy who made fun of Dad because he lives in Fort Wayne, IN where the Vera plant is located. He said his wife is obsessed with Vera and there is always a package on the front porch for her from Vera. Sounds like I need to meet this girl! Meteora is filled with large rock formations that somewhat reminded me of Garden of the Gods, but there rocks were gray instead of red. What makes this place unique is the monasteries that were built on top of the huge rocks! There were orginally more than 20 monasteries built beginning in the 14th century. Through wars and time, only 6 of these monastaries remain today. Four are inhabited by men and two by women. Each monastery has fewer than 10 inhabitants. I don't know if they all are tourist attractions now, but two are, which we went to. We began at a monstary owned by men. The women had to wear skirts and there were some cloth skirts that the ladies could put over their pants/shorts if they didn't have a skirt. The views were just amazing. I think I have typed that phrase everyday, but it's true. Today, maybe the views were the best of the whole trip. Snow capped mountains in the backgroup, with large rock formations in the foreground. We were able to walk through the church and Coastes gave us information about the paintings that were on the wall. The entire wall, ceiling, everything was covered in paintings. Upon further examination, the paintings seemed to have a theme of martyrs because there were headless men everywhere with blood. Typically men. Many of the paintings had depictions of Christ and the Apostles and stories from the Bible. There were ornate decorations, candles, candeliers everywhere. It smelled of incense and was very dark in the church. We learned about how the monks lived when they practiced at the monasteries. They were pulled up in baskets or nets with a pully system. Sometimes the rock formations could be 1200 feet high! So it wasn't an easy little ride. The ride required a leap of faith and I read somewhere that they only replaced the ropes, "when the Lord lets them break." Tourists were not allowed to test their faith this way. There was a huge wine barrel and I mean huge! It filled the whole room. I guess they drank that more than water, but it was diluted some. They collected rain water to drink. As we left the monastary, we had to cross a wooden bridge over a very big drop. The bridge was very safe and sturdy, but one girl in our group, Jenny was scared of the heigth. Her husband, who is very tall and big, was going to help her across, but she said, "I'm not going with you. You're too big. You'll make the bridge collaspe." I thought that was funny. She did make it across but it took her a while. On the drive to the nunnery, Rick told us a great 'monk' joke. It goes like this: A monk came to live in the monastary and was told that he can only say two words every ten years. So after the first ten years, he came to the priest and said, "Bed hard." Another ten years passed and he came back to priest and said, "Food bad." Another ten years passed and the monk came back to the priest and said, "I quit." The priest responded by saying, "That's fine. All you've been doing since you got here was complaining." We all laughed and someone teased Rick at how long he was waiting to tell that joke. He had to bring us all the way to Meteora to tell that joke. We stopped at what the locals call the Balcony. It's a huge rock that sticks out over the openings and made for some nice pictures. It looked that we climbed a 14er where we were standing, but we just climbed off the bus. Our guide warned us to be careful on these rocks because if we slip, we will be gloried immediately. So that scared Dad enough and he was VERY protective of me and practically held my hand the whole way. He as glad that Jonathan wasn't there so he couldn't tease Dad by going close to the edge. The nunnery was very cute and a similar building to the monastary, but you could immediately notice that everything was more 'cute' than where the men lived. The women seemed to keep everything very neat - not that it was neat at the monastary, but there was a herb garden near the front. A well, a hedge garden, and flower pots decorated the courtyard. All the women noticed that it was just 'cute.' Well, I have only 10% battery left on my ipad and it's 11:00pm. I need to get to bed for a 6am wake up call. I think I will close up the blog for tonight and hope that I can spend more time on this tomorrow night. For some reason, I couldn't get the keyboard to work for a while tonight. I did enjoy listening to 104.3 the Fan and the Peyton Manning press conference while typing this post. Iphones are amazing! I feel like I'm at home.