The Long Way Around

What a windy day in the city! I'm not talking a light breeze or even a gust. It must have been about 50mph wind today. Metal not secured on peoples' rooves were flapping about and dust was forming into swirling tornadoes all over the place. I believe I've acquired a layer of dirt all over me.

After securing my train ticket to Athens, I wandered around to find a grocery store for some snacks later on which would suffice for dinner on the train. In all my walking of Kalampaka, I couldn't find any take away food or sandwiches. They must be somewhere, but nowhere I could find them. I decided not to lug the food around all day, as I needed to check out of the hotel at 11:30am, and I wanted to see a few more of the sites in town.

After a long stroll, I finally found the Holy Maria church in the far NE corner of town on the highest and steepest hill possible. I was still quite sore from yesterday's hiking around Meteora.

In the afternoon I had hoped to make my way along a foot path to the last two monasteries on spires. At the start the path was pretty easy to follow. It wound just at the edge of the city between the last few houses and the base of the spires. Most of the time it felt like I was in someone's backyard and at one point crossed an area with cables running up the spires for reception to the homes below. This is where the trail dumped back into a street in town. I hadn't expected this at all. I backtracked thinking I must have missed an obvious turn. There were no signs along the path and when I tried another version, it quickly ended into the mountainside. Already feeling pretty whooped from yesterday and not feeling like I had enough time to get there and back, I gave up and headed to a cafe near the hotel. I figured that if I'd seen 3 monasteries, I'd probably seen enough to suffice for all 5 of the 6 that were open.

Cooled down from an icy Coke, I walked a quick 10 minutes to another site the hotel had suggested not missing and then headed down into town to grab some food for dinner. I picked out some fresh wheat bread for 1E, some tzatsiki, cheese and tahini (ground sesame seeds--like thin, oily peanut butter).

The train ride was excessively late--about 1.5 hours. To exit the station I had to go down 25 some stairs and then back up 25 stairs. To get to the Metro I had to go up probably another 50 stairs, around the corner of the building and then up 5 stairs and down another 40. Mind you, none of these stairs had elevators or escalators. Fortunately the next tram came in 3 minutes. After this, finding my stop and the hostel was easy. This station had escalators all the way out to the street level and the hostel was literally right around the corner. At about 11:30pm I was checked in and then made a small wracket trying to dump my self into the bed. What a tiring day!