Welcome to the Bus Tour.

The crew we are meeting finally arrived at the hotel just before 1AM, and stumbled bleary eyed to their rooms. My mother and father, wound up from 25+ hours of high schooler herding, are in no position to sleep immediately, so we pull out the sweet red Patra region wine I had purchased earlier and some snacks we had left over from the previous day. 80 and I are in better condition than the kids, so the four of us stay up talking and telling stories about Greece and the Paris Airport (where they were trapped for 12 hours) while we wait for their high-tension energy to burn off.

By 4AM, the last of the stories have simmered out and we're all starting to drag. The glass of wine has settled and our systems have finally decided that it is time for bed. We drag ourselves to our rooms (I'm staying with the two boys, who I will be naming Hipster and HR for the rest of the posts).

They have both long since fallen asleep, so I set an alarm that has me up first (6:45) so I can grab a shower and we can all be in the breakfast room by 7:30 with our bags packed. The plan calls for us to drop large bags in the left luggage room if we can, then grab a small bag with a weeks worth of kit and jump in the bus for a tour up to the small town of Kalambaka, at the foot of some of the most amazing rock structures in the world.

We hit the bus early, and met our driver, Yorgos (George) and our Tour Guide, the irrepressibly animated and very Proudly Athenian Vicky, who would be our entertainer, informant, translator and go to girl for the next week.

During the ride north we attempting to recover what energy we had all lost the previous day, especially the kids, and made one brief but important stop, at the Pass of Thermopylae, sight of the incredible last stand of 300 Spartan Warriors and 700 volunteers against the invading Persian Horde (estimated at a quarter of a million men) of Xerxes.

Under a tree and flower covered hill lie the bodies of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their city-state, and the inscription upon their monument and tomb reads thus:

Go tell the Spartans, passer-by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

It is said that when the Spartans were informed of the size of the Persian Army, it was via the following estimation: "Their army is so massive that their volleys of arrows shall block out the light of the sun."

To which, it is said on of the Spartan force of 300 men replied "Good! For in that case we shall fight in the shade."

It is a beautiful place and for any who consider themselves a student of the ways of warriors it seems even now, 2500 years later, to almost shimmer with the raw energy expended in that engagement.

We piled back in the bus after this stop, and continued across the plain of Thessaly.
At the top of a set of astoundingly sharp cliffs, there are a set of Greek Orthodox monasteries. At one time there were twenty-four different ones nestled in the rocks here, but now the number has reduced to six. Four monasteries and two abbeys for the nuns that inhabit them.

Here's a photo from the monastery we visited. [Ad Note: The females were required to wear skirts (which were provided for visitors) inside the monastery.]


Group shot at a monastery.

Just behind where this photo was taken there is a drop of several hundred feet (perhaps 1,000?), and the sensation as you approach it is reminiscent of the opening of C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair. The mind has difficulty comprehending the sheer distance to the ground in the plain below.

Hopefully I can upload a more descriptive picture later today or tomorrow to add to this post.

After we had explored the rock faces and monasteries, we continued on to our small hotel at the foot of the rocks and did a little shopping (on that trip I posted "Boo!"!), then retired to our hotel's outdoor patio. There we introduced the group to a Patras wine like the one mentioned above, and the national Greek past time of Ouzo. We ate a simple evening meal of breads, meats, and cheeses, and then crashed early, since the next morning we were to meet for breakfast at 7:30 again before continuing on to Delphi, the location of the Oracle and Temple of Apollo.