March 11th, Day 5 consisted of visiting the Meteora Monasteries in Kalambaka, lunch and visiting the village of Montsova in the rain, dinner in Ioannina and then a late night arrival at Port Igoumenitsa for our ferry ride, which was delayed;)
7am Hotel Breakfast...
The daylight revealed these magnificent rock mountains...the Meteora region. We loaded the buses and started driving further into the region and started going up...
We caught glimpses of the 6 monasteries atop these massive rocks!
The elephant eye
Just amazing what was built way up there so long ago!
Me and My Girls!
We had to wear skirts into the monastery so I just wore a skirt all day, but the girls had a wraparound that they just tied around their waist.
We arrived to visit one of the 6 monasteries still active today...Holy Monastery of Varlaam. It was built in the 1300's. It took 20 years to get all supplies to the top and then construction began by the monks. Thankfully steps have been put in over the years for us to use today because I'm not sure I would've have used the pully system elevator that they used in that time.
I could see why one would feel close to God up here.
My Girls:)
Jacob and Rylie
Something incredible to see all the way around!
We headed back down and stopped for another beautiful view!
Our awesome directors...Julio, Kleio (they're married) and Stella
We stopped at a gift shop and the lady demonstrated how to use the greedy lesson cup. I bought one because I thought it was too cool. There's a hole inside the cup and at the bottom of the cup. If you fill the cup just to the marked line, you can drink it like normal. If you get greedy and fill the cup past the marked line, then all the liquid will run out the bottom.
We came to our lunch destination...Motsova! It's a small village and again, we were traveling through a tiny street with a giant bus!! Cars were backing up to let us through. Men were coming out of shops direct traffic...wow!
We found a cute lunch spot!
We weren't sure if we wanted to stay when we saw the entire lamb roasting by the kitchen and then saw things like lamb, goat and other "odd" things on the menu, but we found some things that we thought we may like and went for it! Everyone working in this restaurant was completely accommodating and kind!
Well I found one of my favorite things that I ate the whole trip...it was smoked feta with banana peppers and tomatoes baked in a little dish. It was a dip and it was delicious!!
Those "egg roll" things were filled with smoked cheese!
The egg noodles were delish!
She didn't like the coffee;)
Then we went out to find the bakery and the mini-mart while walking the village in the rain!
Okay! So this was pretty funny!
We thought these bakery cases were self-service since the doors faced the public but as soon as Rylie opened the door and reached her hand in to get a little goodie...the shop owner ran over yelling no, no, no, no, no, no. Rylie popped her hand out and the lady shut the case door and kind of shook her hand at her. So then we were very careful to tell her all items to put in our order and not make that mistake again. Everything we got was yummy. We did annoy this shop owner, greatly;)
We found the mini mart and couldn't help but buy a bag full of snacks for the ferry...like we were going hungry or something.
Coffee Shop before getting back on the bus...
We drove to Ioannina for dinner...
Noah trying to keep Julio dry while he was giving us instructions. We would've walked around this town a bit, before dinner, but it was chilly and rainy so we just kind of stayed huddled up in one area until it was time to walk over to the restaurant. We did have some entertainment with the dogs. So in Greece, it's very common for dogs and cats to roam. In this particular town, there were about ten dogs in this area and two of them fought, right in the street beside us, on two different occasions over what looked like their territory. It made me pretty uncomfortable.
We made it to the restaurant!
They brought out dishes...spinach pie (yummy to me), salad with dressing already on it (dressing was not for me), pastitsio which is Greek lasagna (it would be great except it's sweet like nutmeg), then a type of chocolate pudding for dessert (yum again). I think more food was not consumed than consumed at this meal. The kids were like "no, thanks" :)
We had another bus ride to the Port of Igoumenitsa for our ferry ride to Italy! None of us were quite sure what the ferry ride would be like. Most of us had experience with the ferry in Galveston, TX and all of us know what a cruise ship looks like but we were all pretty curious what an "overnight ferry ride" would be like. We were supposed to embark at midnight but there was a delay and we didn't embark until about 3am...
The Greens are talking to Jason and Blondie...they all had high pitch happy voices when talking to Blondie:)
Thankful someone had UNO! I don't even care for UNO but any entertainment was good, at this point!
There were two dogs that looked like they called this terminal home that lied around the whole time and enjoyed all the petting from our crew but they, also, got into a fight in the middle of the chairs, right before we loaded the ferry.
Finally time to load on March 6th - Day 6! So this is the "Superfast Ferry" to cross the Adriatic Sea!
We were quite surprised to see the 18 wheeler trucks unloading and new ones loading as we were entering the ferry. Apparently, decks 1-6 are cargo. Decks 7-9 are restaurants and cabins. So all the truckers getting on and off the elevators, as we were trying to find our cabins, were a little unnerving but we made sure everyone was in groups when walking about. This 21 hour ferry ride consisted mostly of sleeping! We went to sleep about 4am and everyone woke up about 12:30 for lunch (except me and Keeley) and then went back to bed. I got up about 2pm and walked around the ferry and chatted with friends, then we had dinner and then we got to disembark about 9pm in Italy.
At one point, I looked at Life360 to get a view of where we were on the journey and how fast we were traveling and saw that me, Katie and Rylie were in three different spots, so I panicked for a moment. I made Rylie send me a selfie of herself to make sure that no one had stolen them:) They were all safe and sound in their cabin. The wifi was just not working well, even though we had to buy it during the ride.
