A Trip To Greece

On my trip to Bulgaria, I had the chance of visiting the interesting country of Greece.
I was on an organized bus trip with local tour guides and a number of planned events.

The trip had 3 distinct stages.
The first night we spend at the city of Kalampaka, which is situated under the rock towers of Meteora. I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't heard of Meteora. It seems to be a sort of a sheltered place, but you should know - you are missing out. It's an amazing natural wonder, which has been completed with grandiose human achievements to top it up. To begin with, there are those huge rock formations, which are sticking out of the ground like needles, hundreds of meters tall. They have vertical, rock walls supporting a small, flat surface at the top.
It escapes me how people got to the top to build there or the determination needed to do this.

The second part of our trip was Athens (Atina) and the surrounding sites. We had a couple of days there and had a chance to see a lot of the wonders that are there. It is really unbelievable the amount of history that could be found in this one tiny part of the huge world we live in. The tour guide told us a story about the time when the greeks were trying to build a metro, they constantly kept running into more and more remains of the ancient city and eventually they had to give up entirely. As a proof of her words however, everywhere throughout the city you can see remains of 2-3 thousand year old houses and public buildings. The Aghoras (the ancient meeting grounds) are particularly well preserved. I loved the story about the tallest remaining building in the old aghora - the tower of the winds. It's an octagonal building, with a side for each of the major winds (north, south, east and west) and the directions in between (north-east, south-west, etc).

Of course the Parthenon was the main attraction. It's on the tallest (well, actually second tallest) hill in Athens and it is truly majestic in both size and beauty. We also had a round trip around Peloponnese, seeing some of the beginning of the Ancient Greek civilization. We drove through miles and miles of olive trees and pretty, white rocks.

On the way back, we stopped by Delphi. To get to Delphi, you have to travel through what has to be one of the narrowest roads in the world. When going through the city of Delphi, we were literally inches away from the walls of the buildings on the street. Anyway, the ancient city of Delphi was really amazing. It has a lot of history with all the ancient embassies of the different Greek cities as well as a eerie feeling, created by all the mythical stories about the magic of the place. At the very top of the ancient city, there is a huge arena (of course). There was also an amphitheater, where we tested the acoustics of the place and you can hear a voice from one end of the huge construction to the other without any assistance of technology (apart from the mechanical tricks they used, like empty amphorae under the stage and the careful construction of the seating in such a way as to carry the sound waves in the most effective way).

The last part of the trip was in Thessaloniki (Solun in Bulgarian). It is a particular favorite for Bulgarians because of the rich history that connects that city to our own history. It also happens to be quite heavily populated with Bulgarians. It is a very pretty city, with a nice sea view. The main plaza is very beautiful with lots of flowers and surrounded by some amazing old-style hotels. We also had a chance to visit the local market (where you get to see some display of survival bravery only typical for third world countries). Our last stop was the remains of the oldest parts of the city in the middle of the modern day city.

All in all, if you get a chance to visit this country with such rich history, you should seriously consider it. There is so much to see, enjoy and appreciate. It leaves you with a sense of insignificance in a sense after seeing what people were able to do thousands of years ago. Greece rocks.