We had an amazing weekend chance to go to Meteora, in Greek it means "middle of the sky", "suspended in the air" or "in the heavens above". Meteora is located in Northern Greece and about a 4 hour drive from Athens. We loaded up the car and the kids for weekend away. We arrived after dark to our hotel and it was located right next to the pillars. Seeing them lit up at night was almost magical.
We left the next morning our guided tours of the monasteries that are remaining. They believe that some monasteries were built as early as the 11th century. Today, there are only 6 left open. 4 are run by monks and 2 by nuns. It was a very rainy day but even from the start the views were breathtaking.
It was a lot of stairs and walking in the rain.
Though it was rainy, it was so green!
The only way to bring things up to the monasteries is by using the stairs, or a few have a cable car to be able to bring things up for making repairs.
Getting to see how the monks used to make their own wine and store food/provisions was interesting!
Being able to see the other monasteries from the current location we were at was amazing.
It was cold and wet but I was thankful for the extra layer of long skirt provided by the monks was welcomed by me. Apparently its a rule that someone in the family has their eyes closed in a family photo.
The Monastery of Varlaam had this huge wine barrel that the monks used to use to store wine and at one point would sell wine to support the monastery.
After the morning tour we went back to our hotel and changed our wet clothes for dry ones. It was cold and wet but that wasn't going to stop us from another tour that showed us the other monasteries. We got a chance to see them all.
By this point in the day everyone was cold but Bryce was DONE, lol. I love the look on his face in this photo.
Charlotte couldn't make all the stairs and walking so she ended up on my back for most of the day. And of course she was cold so she got Daddy's jacket to wrap around her.
After a day of the kids being good and doing all we asked them to do that we took them to pizza for dinner. Charlotte isn't the biggest fan of pizza so we asked if we could just get come bread and feta cheese. The staff started laughing at her reaction to seeing the cheese.
The boys were happy with their pizza, Charlotte had her cheese and we got to see all the amazing sites. Since it continued to rain the next day we headed back to Athens. This is a place that we would actually break our rule and go back to again.
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