Wah this morning very cold…maybe we were higher up on the altitude level…
Settled our barang barang, and then went for breakfast at a cafe downstairs. I need my coffee fix every morning, if not engine cannot start. Fortunately, the coffee and the ham & cheese sandwich was good and filling 
Our usual coffee is called filtered coffee here.
(Nicole: Our balcony has the view of the gorge of Delphi, which is really nice. I went to enjoy the morning at the balcony while the 2 guys were still under their blankets. We had breakfast at this corner cafe. We picked this cafe because we saw a few locals were smoking and drinking coffee. I read this travel tip about choosing eateries locals patronize. That was why we chose this particular cafe. The lady manning the cafe spoke very little English. But with a bit of pointing and body language, we ordered focaccia bread with Ham & Cheese & Tomatoes. Eric’s spinach pie turned out to be a cheese pie, but never mind, sometimes body language could go wrong too.)
Today I would be the driver, Eric the vehicle commander, and Nicole our official sleeper and meal indicator again. She was getting pretty good at it. It’s my first time driving on the right side of the road, so I was pretty nervous about it. What if I subconsciously drift to the left side? What if I turned left and end up in the wrong side of the road? Hurhurhur so exciting…
Anyway, there wasn’t any spectacular incident…I started off pretty slowly and calmly, and got bolder as time went on hurhurhur…there was this part on the winding mountain path that I overtook a LONG TRUCK while going through the bends…that woke Eric and Nicole up hahahaha. After that Nicole was totally awake, until 5 minutes later she reverted back to her role.
The drive to Meteora passed by a number of towns. We stopped by at the town of Lamia and had one of the cheapest lunch for this trip. 2 pork gyros and a plate of pork slices, with 3 soft drinks, cost us about 12 Euros. That was already damn cheap liao ok!
(Nicole: On the way, we stopped by to take a photo with Leonidas. Clarence’s wish had finally been fulfilled. That’s the power of movie! See, he looked so happy.)
After lunch, we continue our journey up to Trikala, where we would head to the town of Kalampaka, and then proceed to the small little town Kastraki. Kastraki is located at the western region of Meteora, amphitheatrically built between the huge rocks and constitutes one of the municipal town district. It is in this town where we would stay over for the night, in a small hotel called Hotel Sydney. We arrived at about 4.30 pm, and by the time we checked in, it was already too late to visit the monasteries, which made the whole area famous.
You see, what makes Meteora so special is that these monasteries are all perched right at the tip of huge, towering rocks. The word Meteora literally means ‘hovering in the air’. What created this rare geological phenomenon is one of the mysteries of nature. These rocks themselves are impressive, rising from the plains of Thessaly a few miles of northwest of Kalambaka.
Enough of description. We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around the winding roads up to the individual monasteries, marvelling at the beauty and incredibility of these monasteries. It’s really quite unbelievable you know? How do these monks or nuns get up to their monasteries back in the old days? Together with their food supplies, but the use of pulleys? That’s quite scary isn’t it? I would be scared shitless man…
(Nicole :We set off to Meteora, which was a 4-hr drive on the winding mountain roads. Driver today was Clarence. I couldn’t tell you much, cos most of the time I was sleeping during the drive.
We finally arrived at Meteora at 4plus. Meteora is ancient Greek for “suspended in midair”. The rocks look like gigantic cheese blocks with holes, standing by themselves. Really quite amazing! The monasteries are on top of them, so fascinating! It was hard to imagine how those monks transported their building materials up to the top of these rocks.
We found our Sydney Hotel which was located at the root of the monasteries. We were given a 3 single bed room but we requested to switch to a double +single bed room. Good that we changed, cos this room had a balcony and a view of some rocks 
We drove up to Meteora for photo taking. Most of the monasteries were closed by then, so we only plan to roam around and visit the monasteries the next day. We were thankful we drove instead of walking up. The terrain was quite steep. Walking up? No thanks man!
(Nicole: Dinner was at this restaurant recommended by LP. The food was normal, not fantastic. Probably we were a little sick of Greek cuisine at this point. No idea why Clarence had not appetite. Maybe he was sick? Meteora area at night was pretty quiet. We hung out at this ALL TIME CAFE around the corner of the street, this place had computer for internet access, the guys were eager to find out the result for Euro 2008 qualifier. 3 euro for an hr. It was a Saturday evening and the crowd was sparse. I counted, at most 5 tables for the night. Was this good or bad business for them? I wondered. )
Dinner was nothing spectacular. I did not have any appetite today, I also dunno why. But I was damn thirsty, so I drank 2 cans of coke…hurhurhur. After dinner we wanted to use the internet, so we hop over opposite of the road into this internet cafe and used the net for a while, before calling it a night. Tomorrow we will visit 2 monasteries and then make our long journey back to Athens liao. Our journey in Greece is finally coming to an end…sob sob…
Love,
Clarence
