We are up early taking a cab to the airport to pick up a car to start our journey to the West coast. Its always little unusual driving on the right hand side of the road and left hand side of the car. We take the main route but as soon as we can we are traveling the back roads up and down mountains but it’s worth it. The countyside is beautiful, a mixture of farming where it’s possible and mountains and forests where they can’t farm. Given Greece is 80% mountains the forests are quite extensive. Where ever we stop to take photos the forest is alive with birds. We see birds of prey above but as yet are unable to identify.

We are pulled up by police on one of these back roads but passport and International drivers license check and we are on our way.

We drive down from the mountains to Meteora and the scenery is amazing. The monasteries are perched on bare rocky spires. We visit the Moni Megalou Meteorou monastery, a lot of stairs down and then up but it’s worth the walk. While the monastery is used by the monks they have kindly opened it to the public. The monastery has a number of museums and areas that preserve ancient facilities such as kitchen, workshop and cellar. We read letters and manuscripts that are centuries old. Plato’s complete works is one display, written on beautiful old parchment. It seems that while the monastery is a place of solitude it certainly reveals Greece has seen more than its fair share of conflict and the monastery was not exempt.

We travel to the coast and reach Plataria. Our accommodation overlooks the township and the Ionian sea. We enjoy dinner, the usual huge meal a slow event. We finish the day off watching the sunset over the Harbour.