We can't walk 6/9
When I rolled over this morning I knew I was in trouble my legs and hips hurt so bad, calf cramp first thing in the am! Andy was up and 5 and him being the gentleman he is let me sleep until 7. I guess I needed every min of it. We packed the tent and headed back to Kalabaka for breakfast. We waddled out of huge car and got breakfast pizza (philo dough that had cheese and ham) and a double espresso. I had so much caffeine in a quick time period my vision blurred. Maybe that's what I needed to be able to walk, no it didn't help. Oh well we're heading for more mountains.
We drive up the mountains to Meteora which are monasteries on tops of rocks as high as mountains. It was a tourist destination but cool to see. We paid our €6 and I put on my skirt they provided so I could appear civil with my jeans and tennis shoes while the men wore shorts. We saw challises, robes, army uniforms and lots of paintings with death and all the ways to be killed. I guess they built them on top of rocks for a reason. After our visit to the second monastery, the Megasomething, it was all I could handle with tourists so we headed out of town.
I took us not back on the toll road because it's out of the way and its a damn toll road. I thought the road with the highway sign on it would be an actual highway but maybe it was a Greece highway that took us through towns. Each town had a "camera" for speeders. Andy slowed for each since he gets tons of tickets everywhere we go until we saw some with spraypaint and the cords cut. It takes money to monitor them and judging by the lack of stores open in a Monday these towns don't have money. Seriously, where are the people and why aren't every the pharmacies open?
We stopped in our second Lidl of the trip and got him some fleishsalat to go with our fresh €.9 bread. We finally reached some parts of the "highway" where we reached peak speeds of 120km. The countryside is beautiful and so wee the mountains we passed over on our away to Delhpi. The roads had colorful flowers along them all the way until we made our way up and over to mountain ranges to the south of the mainland. We made it to Delphi before 6 hoping we could squeeze it in before they closed for the day. We made it and hiked up the mountain to see the ruins. We saw the theater, oracle building and the stadium all pretty much without anyone else there. The only problem with walking up is you had to walk back down. We walked down some hills backward since it was our calfs and quads that hurt so much from walking down Olympus yesterday.
We drove bckt the through the town and stopped for dinner before finding a place for the night. All I wanted was a salad until we saw a boy with a gyro. It looked so delish we had to have another one, it was totally worth it, still with French fries! We got a beer and drinks to go and saw on a main staircase in the town. A local laughed at us walking down since we were groaning and hobbling. Andy told him we claimed Olympus yesterday, I can tell he said. Back in the car to find a place to sleep.
The first campsite was almost full and we would have had to be surrounded by teenage Germans so we left as we know we couldn't have taken the noise. Andy thought this was the night we could free camp in the olive orchard. I'm not really down for that, although I will if I have to, so we pushed on. Luckily we found a ghetto campsite. This place could be amazing, it's right on the ocean with a pier even. When we enters the gate we couldn't tell if they were open or if it was closed and run down. It was so sketchy I didn't want to drive through the gate in case someone closed it behind us and locked us in to take our organs. A perfectly nice Greek owns it and we out our tent up with the two other groups here for the night. We enjoyed our beers and talked about how lucky we were to find this jewel. Another successful day with lots of history and foods. Tomorrow the beach is likely since we probably won't be able to walk, day 2 is always the hardest. I'm nervous.