Meteora, Greece, October 2020

Kalives, Greece

A day trip to Meteora started from Thessaloniki at 8 a.m. and it took 12 hours. We traveled by bus in the typically unhurried Greek way with frequent stops for coffee.

The first monks settled in the area in the 9^th century. The lived in caves until the 14^th century when the monk named Athanasios decided that it was safer to live on top of free-standing rocks.

For centuries, access was only by rope ladders or nets

In total, 24 monasteries were built in the area. Nowadays, 6 monasteries remain active. Two of them are female monasteries and four are male. Each monastery has 5-6 monks. We visited 2 monasteries: one female and one male.

The monasteries now are connected to the world with roads and bridges, no need to climb up the rock.

There is even a cable car for deliveries

The monasteries, inside and outside, look like many other Greek monasteries. It is their location that makes them so special that one of them, the Holy Trinity monastery, was featured in the James Bond movie For your eyes only and Tintin and the Golden Fleece.

Inside the church of St. Stephan's monastery — Inside the church of St. Stephan’s monastery

The entry fee is 3 euros. All monasteries require women to wear skirts. While the female St. Stephan’s monastery provides free skirts, their male counterparts do business more efficiently and charge another 3 euros per skirt. Naturally, everyone leaves the skirt after seeing the monastery; the monks repackage the skirts and resell them.

The history of the monasteries is quite impressive. Today, they look modern with the state-of-the-art plumbing and sliding glass doors in the restrooms like in a 5-star hotel. Understandably, everyone wants to live comfortably in the 21^st century but there are all those features that made the monasteries famous in the first place?

On the way back to Thessaloniki, we had an almost 2-hour stop for lunch in Kalambaka and a 1-hour stop in a small and lovely town of Trikala.