I live all of 15 minutes drive from an airport (RDU), an international airport if you count our one direct flight to Gatwick on American, but the prices for RDU-Athens in April 2006 took my breath away. The prices out of Washington and New York weren't much better. Then I discovered that flying British Airways out of Washington in March would get the cost down to reasonable levels. When I retired I joined the ranks of those with more time than money, so I decided to leave early and add ten days in Northern Greece before meeting up with the tour group in Athens.
Rising gas prices had affected the cost of domestic flights as well, so I took Amtrak to Washington ($36 one way with a AAA discount) instead of a plane. Now, I prefer trains to planes - more leg room, space to walk around, scenery instead of clouds to look at - but I won't ride this Amtrak route again. While the trains were more comfortable than some I've taken (Hungary comes to mind...), nowhere else have they been so SLOW! Six hours going north became eight, and six hours going south took close to ten.
After a relaxed weekend in Washington with a friend I took the Metro and the Washington Flyer coach out to Dulles, where I scored a bulkhead seat for my flight to London. The meal was mediocre and my seat barely reclined, but we arrived half an hour early, and my backpack showed up on the carousel just as I was starting to worry. I use more or less the same packing list no matter how long the trip, and pack light, but with a Swiss army knife and a hiking stick in my backpack I needed to check it.
After Olympic Airlines made a last minute schedule change I had to overnight in England, but this gave me the chance to indulge in a full, cholesterol-laden, English breakfast, and recover from jet lag in a Gatwick-area B&B. Finally, five leisurely days after leaving home, I arrived in Thessaloniki, Greece's second city. It seemed that the third time was the charm, but just to make sure, on my way south I poured a libation to the Greek gods at Dodoni, a shrine even older than Delphi.
In general, I prefer towns to cities (London excepted), and love the countryside, especially mountains, lakes and waterfalls. So, after checking out some of Thessaloniki's many churches, a quick look at a couple of museums, and a visit to Pella (some good mosaics, but very ruinous ruins) I headed for the hills.
And what hills! They were really mountains, at the end of March still crowned with snow, rugged and lightly populated. I rode KTEL buses, clean and comfortable and mostly on time, from Thessaloniki to Kastoria, Ioannina and Kalambaka. Kastoria, once home to prosperous Jewish fur merchants, is now a popular tourist destination - for Greeks. Both my taxi driver and the owner of my B&B told me that "the foreigners all go to the islands". Nothing wrong with visiting the islands, I was headed there myself after the tour, but I was glad to be seeing another side of Greece as well.
Kastoria was densely packed on to a hillside above a pretty lake, with plenty of cafes along the waterfront. The winding streets invited me to get lost, and I got lost a lot, but always with a view of the lake or mountains, or an old house or church, as a distraction. Eventually, I found both the Byzantine Museum, with its interesting icons, and the ethnographic museum, in a restored mansion, where I noticed strong Ottoman influences.
I hadn't realized before that Northern Greece had not won independence from the Ottoman Empire until 1913, well after the rest of modern Greece. Photos in the museums showed men in fezzes and women in head scarves, and viewing the reconstructed rooms with their low divans and elaborately carved screens I felt I was back in Turkey.
I found Ioannina bigger and flatter than Kastoria, with an island (reachable by ferry) in its lake, and a decommissioned mosque forming part of its museum. Several monasteries, with gruesome frescoes of martyrdoms, attracted visitors to the island, but I preferred the lakeside tavernas, where lunch swam around in holding tanks until the last minute (finding the frogs rather cute, I ate delicious trout instead).
The bus ride from Ioannina to Kalambaka took longer than scheduled, but I didn't mind. First, I was glued to the window by the long, high ride over the Katara Pass, where the snow was still thigh-high, and by the alpine village of Metsovo. Second, the reason the bus had to pull over and stop in the middle of nowhere was to let a bike race through. I've watched the Tour de France on television, but I hadn't previously experienced the force of the peleton, powering past just inches away. It felt like a freight train.
Kalambaka became a Mecca for tourists of all nationalities because of the strange rock formations that surround it, pillars of sandstone that offered safe havens for red-roofed monasteries. Used to be, access was a by a net and a winch, but now there are stairs - only one of the monasteries can be visited without considerable effort.
Just as my early arrival in Greece had been rewarded by snow on the mountains, now I could enjoy the monasteries and their frescoed churches virtually alone. And while I grew hot and tired climbing up and down the myriad steps, I can't imagine what it would have been like in the heat of July or August. Go early!
From Kalambaka I took an early morning train to Athens, where I would meet the tour group
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