Paros - Traditional Greece in the Cyclades

 Our port stop in Parikia on the island of Paros gave us our first look at the traditional white buildings of Greece since our initial stop on Patmos. We booked a walking tour of the town for this morning so we would have some down-time in the afternoon.

Our tour took us to the Panagia Ekatontapiliani, one of the oldest churches, dating back to the 4th Century A.D., as well as to an archaeological museum and then for a walk through some of the old streets.

The church dates from Byzantine times, to the year 326, and predates a lot of the excessive decoration found in Greek Orthodox churches. It is a startling change from the monastery churches at Meteora.

 Legend says that the church was founded by St. Helen, the mother of Constantine the Great, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She stopped to worship at a chapel on the island. It is a pilgrimage church of the Marians, those who show devotion to Mary, the mother of God. The name means 'Church with the Hundred Doors', although only 99 have been found. There is a belief that the hundredth door will open when the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul becomes an Orthodox church again, as it was before it was converted to a mosque by the Ottomans.

The courtyard

The nave. This church doesn't have very
much decoration as it predates the establishment
of that practice

A niche of icons in the iconostasis

One of the small side chapels

These are talismans left when people offer prayers. The
man or woman would be left by someone looking for a partner,
the eye or eyes could be from someone praying to be cured from
a disease or having successful surgery

The baptistery, the Greek Orthodox version of a baptismal font, is one of the best preserved in the world and also dates back to the 4th century. This one is large because the Greek Orthodox baptismal tradition has always been full immersion.

After our visit to the Church, we walked around behind it, realizing just how large it looks from the outside, and entered the archaeological museum.

The Church from the back

The Archaeological Museum has many artifacts from all over the island, including pottery, marble sculptures, remains of columns used in Greek and Roman buildings, and even glassware from Venice.

This floor tile mosaic was once in the home of
a wealthy local

Some of the Venetian glassware

Even though the visitors aren't allow to touch the
exhibits, nobody told the local cats not to. This
one followed us around on our tour

There she is again, gracing the mosaic
floor with her presence

After our visit to the museum (and its bathroom...) our guide took us to another part of the old town with its small streets and many shops and cafes. She bought a box full of local sweets made with marzipan, and we each had a piece to try. After a short walk around to get oriented, our formal tour was over and we headed off to check out some of the little alleyways.

The display case of sweets our guide bought

Some of the little alleyways in the old town. Lots of picturesque spots, and quite a few large old bougainvilleas in full bloom.

We were back on the ship around noon, and I started working updating the blog. Larry was outside around 3:30 and noticed heavy smoke on the island. This is what was going on:

According to news sources I found online, it was a wildfire that was whipped up by winds that increased dramatically in the afternoon. There were some calls for evacuation in the area of its path, but the fire has now (Tuesday) been contained. It doesn't seem like there was significant damage anywhere. This kind of thing seems to happen regularly, as there were news reports of fires at some point during each of the past 3 years when I googled for this one.

And now for the bad news: the same weather system that brought all of this wind to Paros was also going to affect Santorini for Tuesday. We had already figure that out from looking at the weather forecast in the morning. Santorini is a tender port, and there was no way that the tender service could run safely in those conditions, so Crystal had found a substitute for us - Nafplion. In just a few short hours, the Shorex staff on board and at head office had come up with 4 options for tours.

We had decided to take a break from tours and just take the tender in to town, but the day dawned rather overcast with showers, so we ultimately decided to make it an in port sea day. According to AccuWeather it was supposed to get a little nicer in the afternoon, but that hasn't happened either. We walked around the Promenade Deck a few times instead of around the town. But at least now the blog is up to date!

Tomorrow we will be on Mykonos (hopefully, as it is still under the same weather system), and we'll have to pack for Thursday's disembarkation after our morning walking tour.

The Spectacular Monasteries of Meteora

 This was the name of our tour, and it certainly lived up to it!

Everything I read about the Meteora monasteries when researching our shore excursions talked about the 300 steps you have to climb to reach them, and Larry was a little nervous about that aspect of the tour. But other than the requirement for women to wear a skirt and cover their shoulders, there was no mention made of this physical challenge. And it would have been quite the challenge for some of the others in our group of 30. As it happened, the monasteries we visited were both accessible by road and then a few stairs.

Meteora is the name of the rock formations where the monasteries were built. They do seem to just loom up out of nowhere just behind the town of Kalambaka. The original 24 monasteries were established in the 13th and 14th centuries; now there are 6 remaining, all still in use by orders of monks or nuns. These remaining monasteries were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 1988.

The history of religious occupation of the area goes back to the 900s, when a group of hermit monks began inhabiting huge hollows in the rocks. Our guide, who was very knowledgeable and thorough, pointed some of them out to us as we drove down to Kalambaka.

The monasteries were built at a time when there was increasing attack on Greece by the Ottomans, and the communities of monks wanted to remain safe and remote. The only access was via rope ladders and baskets. They certainly couldn't have any fear of heights! I had a hard enough time walking up a set of stairs to the second monastery we visited, and that was in a crush of people.

St. Stephen's Monastery as we approached

The first monastery we visited was the St. Stephen's Monastery, which is now the home of 28 nuns. And they are very strict with the dress code for women. There are wrap-around skirts available in the vestibule where you purchase your tickets, but not enough to go around, so there were girls and women waiting for skirts to be returned. In fact, there was a nun standing in the middle of the staircase taking skirts from women who were leaving and passing them over to those who were waiting. I was glad I had packed an appropriate skirt. I put it on over my zip-off Columbia pants in the bus, and zipped off the lower part of the legs, so I was still wearing the shorts underneath. 

St. Stephen's is one of the larger accessible monasteries and is home to a large courtyard and garden, as well as a museum and a magnificent church. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, as it would be practically impossible to move people through if they kept stopping for pictures and (Heaven forbid!) selfies, no photography is allowed. The church walls and ceilings, and even the wooden beams that span across the arches for stability, are completely painted. The walls are covered with religious frescoes and lots of gold leaf. It is almost a relief for the eyes to get outside and into the garden.

The courtyard

The entrance to the church. No photos past this point!

A small chapel in the garden

The view down to the town of Kalambaka

Looking back at St. Stephen's as we drove toward
our second stop

This is the Holy Trinity Monastery, which sits alone on the top of a pinnacle. This must be the one they are talking about with the 300 steps, as there's no other way to visit. You can just see the staircase in the front centre of the photo beside the tree.

In this photo we can see two monasteries. The one on top of the rock is the Great Meteoron, the largest of all of them, and the one just above the trees is the Monastery of Rousanou, which was our second visit. We left the bus at a pathway that wound down through the trees and ended at the entrance to the monastery steps.

Here's a somewhat closer version of the above photo, so you can sort of see the access. From the entrance there is a flight of stairs to a terrace, and then another flight of stairs with a fairly low balustrade to a short bridge (on the right hand side of the building at approximately the level of the covered balcony) that was pretty scary to cross.

Once again, lots of people, so going into the small church, also highly decorated, was something of a hassle. We had a couple of minutes out on a balcony on the other side of the building, where I took this panoramic shot of the valley and the Great Meteoron.

Once we finished at the monastery, we did have to take a set of stairs the rest of the way down. Some of our group had walked up from the where the bus parked to wait for us, and counted about 165 stairs. So walking down those as well as the path down to the monastery probably also gave us a 300-stair count.

This next monastery we photographed is St. Nicholas Anapausas, which is also open to the public. Another one of those you have to climb stairs to reach.

And finally, a photo of the Monastery of Varlaam. It is also a very large monastery, and only has 7 monks living in it at present. They could probably go from oneSunday to the next and never see each other!

It was a fairly short and rather crowded visit to the monasteries, and considering this isn't even high tourist season, we did quite well to see everything. The monasteries are a must-see for anyone visiting this part of Greece.

We had a surprise sighting as well. On the highway we passed the convoy bearing the Olympic Flame, which had been lit 5 days previously and was now on its traditional journey through Greece before the relay to Paris for the 2024 Summer Games. Now, as we stood waiting to cross the street to reach our bus, the convoy passed right by us! I did manage to grab one good photo

And just so Larry could say he was here:

One more interesting site in the rocks is this small monastery in a cave about 30 metres up in one of the rocks. It is the Monastery of St. George of Mandila. The entrance to the cave is traditionally hung with kerchiefs, although it looks more like larger cloths are there now.

Back in Kalambaka, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. Again, we started with a platter of appetizers, including spanakopita, tyropita (with cheese instead of spinach), tzatziki and a mini-moussaka

For the first time, we actually had a Greek Salad!

And our main course was, once again, lamb, but this time served with orzo.

After taking a last look and photo of the Meteora rock formations, we headed back to Volos and the ship.

Our next stop is the island of Paros, where we only have a walking tour of the town of Parikia in the morning.

The Old Villages of Thessaly

Our port of Thessaloniki is one of the largest in Greece, next to Piraeus, and has been so for thousands of years throughout the extensive maritime heritage of this part of Greece. It is not far from the mountain range that includes Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, and sits in the Thermaic Gulf, which is a very well protected natural area. We actually flew over Thessaloniki on our way into Athens and I saw the town and the gulf from the plane.

Our tour today took us into the hills near the shore but about 80 kilometres from the town. We were headed back into history, in the village of Palaios Panteleimonas. The houses are all built of stone from the Olympus area, and the village dates back to the late 14th Century, and is a protected traditional settlement under the European Union.

Views toward Mount Olympus on our drive

Looking down over the area and the Castle of
Platamonas. We weren't even all the way up to the village yet!

This small community was left in ruins after World War II, and many previous residents moved down from the hills to form Neos Panteleimonas, or New Panteleimonas, to be less isolated. It was left that way until the early 1980s when an influx of Armenian stonemason immigrants started to rebuild the houses, as they had been constructed in a similar method to the buildings of their home country.

Since the village's rebirth, it has become a jumping off point for people exploring the Olympus foothills and the area between Thessaloniki and Volos. It is full of small restaurants, tiny boutique hotels and artisan workshops and shops. We had a walking tour of the village, and then had tea or coffee and a sweet treat particular to the area called 'spoon sweets', a sort of fruit compote. We tried the cherry and fig versions of these.

The view from the restaurant where we had
our coffee and sweet

Inside - decorated in the old traditional fashion

Our bowls of fig and cherry 'spoon sweet'

The village is very picturesque and the views are all spectacular. The village streets are too small for anything but the smallest cars and vans, so we had to walk from the parking lot just outside.

View of some of the houses from the parking area

The roadway is all cobblestone and the buildings
are all made of stone and wood with terracotta tile roofs

Each one of these signs points to a bar, restaurant or
small hotel

One of the traditional buildings with a
lovely wisteria on the wall in front

Another traditional stone house

This is an overlook from just in front of the restaurant
where we had our tea break

I found this restaurant terrace - imagine sitting out
here on a summer evening....although it is a little cool
at 450 metres elevation!

A cute display of coloured lanterns

One of the shops sold these little
ceramic houses

After our time in Palaios Panteleimonas, we were taken to the town of Litochoro in the foothills of Mount Olympus to have lunch. We had been expecting to see some old buildings in part of the town, but our tour guide decided we needed a short hike to experience nature in the Enipeas Gorge. The problem was that she didn't tell us that's what we were doing ahead of time. The trail is lovely, but could be a little dangerous as there are very few railings to keep you from falling off. We ultimately ended up at a small and not overly exciting waterfall, had 5 minutes to look and take a photo or two, and then we had to march back to the restaurant for lunch.

Our lunch was very good, and surprisingly a departure from the standard lamb. Along with a coleslaw and tzatziki we had chicken with Greek style potatoes. Dessert was Greek yogurt with some apricot preserves.

I think these are zucchini keftedes - deep fried
balls of zucchini dough

After our late (2 p.m. sit down) lunch, we climbed back into the bus for our one hour drive back to the port. We ended up being the last tour group back before they hauled up the gangway. We would probably have enjoyed just as much a little more time to explore Palaios Panteleimonas and maybe have our lunch there before going back to the ship. We didn't get very much out of the stop at Litochoro as it seemed very rushed and there wasn't much historically significant or interesting to see. That should change tomorrow with the visit to the monasteries at Meteora, actually not all that far away from here.