Day 4: February 22

I'm back. Clearly it's not that difficult to find an internet cafe in Greece! I figure I will start out with the answer to yesterday's riddle as well as today's letter:

February 22:

answer to yesterday's riddle: morning dew
success: Jacob got this one first. shocker.

dare: to take a classic tourist picture
success: I took the classic picture in front of the landscape of Meteora with my hands doing the peace sign. Simple, yet classic. I was incredibly tempted to ask the group of Japanese tourists to take their picture with me, but I figured the language barrier was a problem explaining that one.

quote: "The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist." - Russell Baker

Riddle: I see without seeing. Noise is an ally.

So anyway, today we went to Meteora, which you all should google. It is amazing. Essentially, they are these spectacular cliffs that rise out of the valley and are impossibly high. The monks have built monasteries on the top, and the Greeks have built an impractical road (oftentimes without guardrails) to the top. It is incredibly hard to describe without you actually seeing it (or even a picture), but these structures consist of stairs built into the rock and bridges crossing between cliffs. As you can imagine, the view out into the rest of the valley is fantastic. It's easy to see why the monks initially built their monasteries here. It would be easy to see anyone of any religion wanting to build there. Apparently, Meteora means "on high", and the museums themselves seem to have a fascination with representations of the Greek War of Independence, which I'm told has to do with the fact that the Turks were Muslim and so there was an obvious problem with their occupation of Greece (whose inhabitants are, you guessed it, Greek Orthodox).

After that we took off to Delphi. We stopped in Thermopylae, where we nearly got hit by a car crossing the road. As our driver, George, said, "This is not Canada. People don't ever stop here." Wise words. Lesson learned.

Delphi itself is beautiful as well (which seems to be the go-to word of describing the cities of Greece). It is essentially a city built onto the side of the mountain, and so there are plenty of stairs going higher or lower into the village which looks out onto the valley. We haven't gone to site yet, but I can definitely understand why the Ancient Greeks decided to build it here.

What is also amazing is that our hotel has a tub. You might consider this menial, but not for us. We also appreciate Canadian toilets now...especially ones where we don't have to squat! As for Greek words, I haven't picked up that much (except for the word for grocery store, which I figured out pretty quickly!). The food is incredibly cheap and I'm oftentimes wondering how the shopkeepers make any money! But other than that, Greece is a wonderful country and it feels like we've been here for weeks! Perhaps I won't even come home!