Doing it Greek Style

  "Budget airlines are not as bad as they are cracked up to be"                                                     -Zeno the Stoic We return to Athens today with Olimpia airlines which was just fine-even the luggage wasn't lost. We catch a taxi with the worst taxi driver in Greece who has a rather laissez-faire attitude to living; while travelling at 130kph he has one hand on his phone,texting, one hand on the radio changing stations every 15 seconds to a new abomination of europop and one hand on the steering wheel. Despite the fact he cannot speak English and we cannot speak Greek he insists on engaging us in unlimited banal conversation😡😡. He eventually drops us off in the general region of our hotel-"no tip for you,Zorba". We go out for dinner at a local taverna and eat a moosaka which tastes as if it had been made from real mooses!

  "Sure, I have a cousin who lives in Melbourne, so I will give you very special price on my tourist crap"                                       -Socratese After getting mildly lost in the backstreets we find our way down to the ferry to the island in the middle of the lake. A fellow passenger is an American who speaks loudly on the phone and then ends his conversation with asking his callee to listen to his prayer which he also shares with all around him! The island is a delightful place full of monasteries and wildflowers; we circumcise the island. We also visit the Ali Pasha museum; Ali Pasha was Greece's answer to Vlad the Impaler We waste no part of the animal who spent his time in power roasting his enemies(literally) and drowning virgins in the lake. He eventually was decaffeinated by the sultan who paraded his head around for a lark. I make a reservation on a reputedly popular v...

"Whenever I visit Ioannina I always carry an umbrella"                                       -Aristotle          Today we spent the morning wandering the streets of Ioannina. Robyn attends the hairdresser which takes upward of 2 hours-my most recent haircut in India took about 7 minutes and that included a scalp massage!Robyn ends up with big Greek hair! We then visit the Pamera caves with a guide who is an expert on flora and fauna but seems somewhat ignorant of geology. When leaving the cave we discover that the heavens have opened and after wandering the streets we eventually find a taxi and return drenched to our digs. Tonight we dine at a fine joint adjacent to the city wall.

  "The mere sight of a female ankle will cause me to have a major stirring in my toga"           - Archimedes We were scheduled for a hike this morning but due to the lack of clemency in the weather we are transferred to a bus tour-so it goes. So bloggees brace yourselves for another tranche of monotonous   monastery pix. Natural selection of eurotrash The monks are so nookie starved that the sight of any female naked flesh will drive them into paroxysms of lust, so my consort is required to don a rather unfashionable skirt. In the afternoon we catch a sauna   bus and arrive kilos lighter in the unpronounceable town of Ioannina. The taxi driver has no idea where our residence is so I act as GPS. Ioannina is a "charming" town on a lake full of mostly Greek tourists.  We wander the town and enjoy a meal that would cause great distress to vegetarians(good)

  "Why build a monastery in the valley when you can put it on top of an inaccessible mountain "                             -Homer We travel today by bus to Meteora to look at the monasteries. We travel by bus which is advertised as having air-conditioning; maybe somebody should explain that it would work better if it was turned on.We arrive in the town of Kalabaka and are taken to Bate's hotel. Despite being surrounded by beautiful scenery they manage to give us a room  with views of the parking lot. Our tour guide is Thomas who is a real gem. He is not one to hold back regarding the various German nasties perpetrated during the war in this area. He also gets extra points for describing an infant as "a sack of shit"! This is supposed to be a sunset tour but due to cloud cover-no sunset! So we are forced to look at vertiginous mountains with monasteries perched on top. Spot the monastery  Cable car to t...