Athens - Meteora - Trikala - Volos

After my mother left the week went by quickly with a lot of studying and on Wednesday me and my roommate had some friends over for dinner to keep us company during the expected riots.

Then came Friday, and early in the morning on the 19th of November we Erasmus students met up outside of the ESN office where the buses came to pick us up and take us on our second trip this semester. The first stop was Meteora, the famous landscape with the astonishing rock mountains and the Greek Orthodox monasteries on their tops. Before I came to Greece for my semester abroad, this was one of the main places on my bucket-list. So you can imagine the happiness I felt when they announced that we would do this trip together with the ESN! 

My stomach was, for many reasons, filled with butterflies the whole bus ride there and when the mountains started to appear in the horizon I felt the tears burning in my eyes out of gratitude. If you ever come to Greece during the autumn/winter this is a must. For sure one of the most beautiful and astonishing places I have ever seen or visited! 

"The Meteora (Greek: Μετέωρα) is a rock formation in central Greece hosting one of the largest and most precipitously built complexes of Eastern Orthodox monasteries, second in importance only to Mount Athos. The six (of an original twenty four) monasteries are built on immense natural pillars and hill-like rounded boulders that dominate the local area.

Their unusual form is not easy to explain geologically. The rocks are composed of a mixture of sandstone and conglomerate which was formed of deposits of stone, sand, and mud from streams flowing into a delta at the edge of a lake, over millions of years. About 60 million years ago during the Paleogene period a series of earth movements pushed the seabed upward, creating a high plateau and causing many vertical fault lines in the thick layer of sandstone. The huge rock pillars were then formed by weathering by water, wind, and extremes of temperature on the vertical faults. It is unusual that this conglomerate formation and type of weathering are confined to a relatively localised area within the surrounding mountain formation."

Source: Wikipedia

After visiting the monasteries the buses took us to Trikala where we ate lunch/dinner before heading off to Volos where we got to our hotels. For the rest of the night we drank, danced and partyed and soon after midnight I went back to the hotel and got a good night sleep which I was grateful for the day after when it was time for our next adventure...

With lots of love, Elsa ♡