Sunday, November 9th, 2025

Meteora Sunrise Apartment

Friday night we took our car back – easy – and got on a bigger ferry to Kos town. We sat on the top deck and looked at all the little islands and Turkey on the way over. In Kos things were mostly shut down for the season but we were able to see the plane tree where Hippocrates taught his medical students (or at least one of the tree’s descendants), the outside of a byzantine castle, a beautiful harbor, and a restaurant that we hung out in near some old Greek ruins, which happen to be everywhere. The restauranteur was fascinated by us, and asked a lot of questions about where we were from.

We took a cab to the airport and had a good talk with our cabbie, who hustles driving cabs during the season before the slow season starts in winter. He told us about the olive oil presses on the island, which even the olives from Kalymnos come to get pressed in since Kalymnos is too small for its own press these days. At the airport I spoke to family on the phone, and it sounds like Grandma is able to leave the hospital (on her birthday!). We had a quick flight to Athens where we got our rental car and stayed at a little hotel apartment nearby with handy remote check in.

On Saturday we woke to gorgeous lightning and cotton candy skies, under which we drove about three hours to Delphi. The landscape here on mainland Greece is beautiful; there are knolls and limestone mountains everywhere, pretty farms and olive groves, excellent toll highways, normal drivers, and little coffee houses to stop in everywhere. Each coffee house has a group of retirement-age men hanging out on the porch. We stopped briefly in a town called Arachova just because it was so mind-numbingly pretty; the view was of Mount Parnassus and the town’s vibe was a mix of Dolomitian ski town and Italian hill town with little alleys filled with cats. We’d love to return here to ski!

A bit down the road we finally came to Delphi: home of the ancient “oracle” and at one point considered the center, or “navel” of the world. It’s filled with a sanctuary dedicated to the god Apollo, a 5,000 seat theater, and a stadium where they held games similar to the Olympics but including a singing competition held in the theater. The museum had many of the partially preserved friezes and statues that visitors would erect for Apollo and the oracles. From what we could gather it sounds like the oracles were ladies who got high on fumes that came out of fumaroles/smoked oleander and spoke in tongues; priests would then “translate” the oracles words into a riddle-like answer for the question a visitor asked. Because people came from all over the known world to get their questions answered here in Delphi, the priests actually had a lot of information and context for current events. Some of their advice was probably pretty good! We loved the view from up on the hill tucked against the huge limestone walls, and in the rain everything was quite atmospheric and mystical.

We drove a few more hours to Meteora, a town with a random outcropping of huge natural stone pillars that monks built monasteries on top of starting in the 11th century. The geology itself is super cool, and then there are amazing cloisters perched on top of each tower; it’s mind-boggling and really pretty. We did a bit of a scenic drive around the pillars and got a fantastic view for photos before the fog rolled in.

For dinner we ate in the town square of the little town of Kalabaka, and went to an arcade to shoot some basketballs. The arcade was filled with little Greek children playing video games on the Xbox/TV set ups. We finished the night in a little apartment right up against the rock towers and watched the James Bond movie “For Your Eyes Only” that was filmed here in Meteora (and Cortina)!