DaY 11 (Day 27)
When we did board we discovered our allocated seats were facing the rear, not great for Sasha's travel sickness but also they were in a group of 4 seats - and we were sharing the other two seats with an elderly couple who seemed to have more bags than they could hold with them. We managed to stick most of our bags above our heads but the big purple had to go elsewhere - I took the detachable bag off the front of it, and put the big part in the roof luggage rack above the main luggage rack at the end of the carriage. Its very heavy so I figured if anyone was able to reach it, if they tried taking it they'd find it was heavy and it would fall in them. Also where it was we could keep an eye on it.
After a while Sasha migrated to the seat behind after visiting the bathroom because legroom was better even if the seat still faced the wrong way, and after a while I joined her. The ride was about 5hrs long, and we wound our way into hills and mountains past, above and below a new presumably high speed railway line. At one point Sasha suddenly catapulted herself out of her window seat, over me in the aisle seat (literally over, not past!) and collapsed in the opposite group of seats which it just happened to be where she'd also flung her iPhone mid-catapult - there was a bee by the window! It was on some vents, and it looked like it was having trouble with them. I attempted to coax it onto a piece of card to help it out and hopefully take it to a window but instead it flew off around the carriage, landing on a curtain where it got smacked and killed by another passenger. Poor bee, but probably an inevitable fate for it whether I had left it or not - it wouldn't have stayed on the vent for the rest of the trip. Eventually the train split off the main line onto a branch, and a few gypsy's hopped on for a while. They didn't try for anything though apart from asking for money and our bags were still with us when they left - big purple was well out of their reach too. However a lot of passengers had gone and collected their bags from the main luggage racks when the gypsy's got on. Our arrival in Kalampaka, the main town at Meteora was a bit behind schedule - an Indian couple started talking to us and were concerned about the delay as they were only doing a day trip from Athens and wanted to find a particular guy in a taxi who could take them on a tour of the monasteries for €5! After hopping off the train, we found our way to the hostel, checked in, went to the supermarket for supplies, then went and had lunch at a place Sasha had looked up. They did nice food, had a lovely ambiance but the main waiter seemed rather grumpy!
We had a plan for the late afternoon - climb up the rocks and watch the sunset from Sunset rock. Sunset was not until 8pm but we needed to make sure we secured a good spot before everyone else came. We set out, and Sasha asked which way did we need to go. "Up" was my reply, which she didn't take kindly to but really what else was I supposed to say? All the streets sloped upwards until they met at a point which was where the path up began - all we needed to do was keep going uphill and we'll find the path!
Day 12 (day 28)
Day 13 (Day 29)
Summing Up
My overall impression of Greece is that its a lovely country with a varied landscape, and friendly people but its a bit of a mess in areas. My first impressions of Athens for instance was not good at all - lets be honest, at first I hated it. But it improved a lot, however it is not a city you can let your guard down in and I remember seeing people eyeing us up - both adults and children - and start moving in an attempt to relieve us of valuables, but with a bit of catching their gaze and staring at them, they would veer off as if they had remembered something or someplace they needed to be instead. This happened mostly in Athens and Piraeus, but a few other places along the way also. You could say its because their economy is a mess - every Greek person we had a conversation with mentioned how the economy over the whole country is bad, and for sure it is, but from everything I've been told Athens, Piraeus and Greece has always had that unsafe element.
Whether Greece will manage to get itself out of its economic rut remains to be seen, but its interesting to see that it hasn't exactly become cheaper as a result of the woes. Once upon a time, Greece was the jewel of the Balkans for tourists - lots of Islands, easy to visit and dramatic scenery. It would have Yugoslavia to compete with back then, but Yugoslavia probably was a bit less accessible and more off-putting to some because of its Communism or had less options or opportunism. Nowadays, for those doing the travelling thing that Sasha and I have Greece is not a common destination - its not even on many peoples lists. You want to do Islands? You go to Croatia or Turkey, both are much cheaper. Swimming along dramatic coastlines? Again, forget Greece - you go to Croatia, Montenegro or Albania, much cheaper and less populated beaches too. Greece's seemingly pre-eminence of being the beach-and-Island destination in Europe is a hangover of it being in the Western Europe sphere when the Iron Curtain was up and Yugoslavia was Yugoslavia - the curtain is down, half of Europe has opened up, they've learned how to diversify and appeal to the market and that traditional key place Greece had is now heavily eroded. Greece can't even rely on its tourism trade to bail it out its economic woes alone - that tourism trade is no longer for granted, though the country isn't making much effort to hold onto it or regain it. What sort of other business does Greece do economically? I have no clue. France has wine, Belgium makes Beer, Germany makes high-quality engineering goods, Britain is a massive Financial Hub - what of Greece? It makes wine but its not common on the shelves at the supermarket, it makes Olive oil but most of that seems to come from Italy. Greece might have a varied economy for all I know - it might be a jack of all trades, but seemingly a master of none. Except maybe having strikes.
So for a country that took me a long time to get around to, like Turkey it has now been done and done reasonably well. The end of travelling around Greece also marks a month of us travelling - so far so good, we're having a great time and coping well with the pitfalls!