Marvelous Meteora and Delphi

I’ve been fascinated by the clifftop monasteries that balance precariously  in the Meteora region of central Greece since seeing them in the 1981 James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only.

My previous time in Greece was spent farther south in Athens and on the islands of Ios and Corfu, so the opportunity last July to travel 230 kilometres southwest from Thessaloniki to this wondrous location next to the town of Kalabaka as part of a journey traversing eight Balkan nations was one I couldn’t pass up.

Twenty-four monasteries were built in this area to serve monks and nuns following the teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church between the 14th and 16th centuries. Six remain functioning, four sparsely occupied by monks and two by nuns, in what was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.

It cost three Euros (approximately $4.50 Canadian) to enter the biggest building of the Monastery of Great Meteoron, the largest and highest of the six. Climbing several flights of stairs is required to get to the top, and visitors can enter a church, a small museum and reproductions of an old kitchen and carpenter shop.

But it’s the spectacular exterior views that are the main draws of Meteora. I only had a few hours to spend here and the monasteries are spaced widely enough apart that there wasn’t time to visit the others: Varlaam; Rousanou; St. Nicholas Anapausas; St. Stephen; and The Holy Trinity.

However, even if I couldn’t enter these other structures, which at some point I’d like to have the time to do in the future, there were still vistas to be cherished from a distance from the viewpoints I was able to access. 

The concept of building these beautiful places of worship and contemplation on these steep natural pedestals more than 500 years ago, when ladders and rope pulleys were the only way of accessing and transporting materials to the top, boggles my mind.

It was time to board a bus again, and while its air conditioning was more comfortable than the 40-degree Celsius heat of Meteora, perspiration would have been a small price to pay for wandering around a place that I wanted to experience more than any other on this trip for several more hours.

It was another 230 kilometres to Delphi, much of it on winding roads through mountains, and the lovely views out the window lessened the blow of leaving Meteora. 

We arrived at 7 p.m. in Delphi, and I got fine looks of the mountains from the balcony of my room at Hotel Hermes. There are only two commercial streets in the small town, and I walked them both while checking out menus and taking photos of the surrounding landscape.

I bought a craft pilsner beer from Elixi Microbrewery, which is named after the town and comes in a unique bottle, and drank it on that balcony before heading out again for dinner.

I chose to eat at a small place where I was the only customer, perhaps because it was on the other side of the street from the restaurants offering much better views from their terraces. My meal consisted of a Greek salad, homemade bread, a plate of spaghetti, a large pork souvlaki skewer with green peppers, homemade French fries and a plate of different types of melon. It was more than adequate taste-wise, very filling and a good deal at 10 Euros (approximately $15 Canadian). People-watching on my sidewalk table was free.

I took another walk to work off some of the food, had another beer, and was in bed by the relatively early hour of 12:30 a.m.

While the town is quaint, Delphi is on the radar of tourists because of its historical significance and ancient ruins on the southwestern slope of Mount Parnassus. This is another UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is best known as being home to the Oracle of Delphi — an extremely influential priestess through whom the god Apollo is said to have spoken.

The archaeological site dates back to the eighth century B.C. and includes the remains of the Temple of Apollo, other temples, treasuries, statues, monuments, a theatre, a gymnasium, a stadium, a hippodrome and other structures.

The Delphi Archaeological Museum has been built at the site to house a collection of artifacts that have been excavated over the years, beginning in earnest with digs by the French Archaeological School in 1893.

A guided 2.5-hour morning tour allowed enough time to take everything in before it was time to board the bus for the final stop on this journey: Athens. There was one more photo stop near the base of Mount Parnassus ski area, the largest in the country, before the winding mountain roads started to straighten out as the terrain flattened before Athens came into view in mid-afternoon.

If you’d like to get a taste of what several countries in this part of the world is like, I’d recommend TravelTalk’s All About Balkans tour. The regular price is $2,570, but tours from March through November are now on sale for $1,414.