Meteora Off The Beaten Path

A plenty of three coloured monastic cats - that was what everybody can see when entering the Great Meteoron! Here in Russia three coloured cats mean happyness for their owner. I don't know if it is so in Greece.

There are many other monasteries in Meteora, but they are closed (without monks), like "Ypapanti", "St. George Mandilas", e.t.c.

The greatest number of monasteries was 24:
1)Holy Spirit 2) Holy Modesto, 3)Chain of Apostle Peter, 4)Saint Prodromos, 5)Saint Taxiarchs, 6)Saint George Mandilas, 7)Saint Dimitrios, 8)Saint Antony, 9) Saint Athanasios, 10)Virgin Mary, 11)Saint Nicolas Badovas, 12)Saint Nicolas Kofinas, 13)Transfiguration of Jesus on the Mount, 14)Varlaam, 15) Saint Stephen, 16) Holy Trinity, 17) Holy Monastery 18)Roussano,19)Candle mass, 20)Almighty, 21)Kallistratou, 22)Ipsiloteras or Kalligrafon, 23)Saint Apostles and 24)Saint Nicolas Anapafsas.

You may see the quarter of Sopotos in the north east section of town. It is one of the oldest parts of the town, very picturesque encircled by the arch of the two great rocks, east by the rock of Holy Trinity and to the north by the greatest and most majestic rock, the rock of Alyssos.

You may watch my high resolution photo of Kalambaka-Meteora on the Google Earth according to the following coordinates 39º 42' 33.48" N 21º 37' 37.26" E or on my Google Earth Panoramio Cathedral church of Saint Vissarion .

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After dinner I walked around the Palazzo restaurant and found a Modern Church which provided wonderful views with Kalambaka’s Rocks on the background. I didn’t find its name because it seemed to me it had been just erected – it looked very new.

You may watch my high resolution photo of Kalambaka-Meteora on the Google Earth according to the following coordinates 39º 41' 53.07" N 21º 38' 0.43" E or on my Google Earth Panoramio Kalambaka Modern Church.

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Greek honey is famous and no wonder if you can see many beehives as shown her near Katerina in the direction of Mount Olympus. The photo show both "modern", wooden beehives, of a type that can be found everywhere in Europe and local wickerwork beehives that I had never seen anywhere else.

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When the road gets further into the mountains, the landscape becomes very different but remains, even in august, very green. There is not much agriculture possible but the peasants succeed in getting hay that is collected along the dirt road.

In this area, in the mountains, not far from the Meteora, there are from time to time small ''islands'' of rich agriculture. This photo shows a small plateau covered with green and golden fields. Who would believe that this is Greece!

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After the Meteora, we went on several very small roads, most of them dirt roads in order to have a look at absolutely tourist free parts of Greece! The sheepfolds shown on the two photos were primitive wooden structure, mostly covered with thatch that seemed to have remained unchanged since last century!