Instanbul was fun but like all places that we visit there is always a time to move on.  Audrey and I were off to Athens via Thessaloniki and Kalamanka, 2 of a lot of places that you can visit in Greece that contain tonnes of history.  Thessaloniki was a logical choice as it was the perfect time and distance from Istanbul and contained several UNESCO places that we could visit.  This convinced us that we should spend the extra day there, a decision that we regretted in the end because, although you could see the that they was a lot of things that we could visit, each one was small and completed quickly.  Plus it was a dirty city with trash and graffiti everywhere which didn't lend itself to wanting to explore the back street as you can easily do in Istanbul.  The only good thing about it all is that by about 6pm that night, Audrey and I were spent and cirled up in a ball and basically passed-out.  We wanted to visit Batza's uncles resturant but you can only do that when you are compost, and we we're of the non variety.
The other place that we chose was Meteora, an unbelievably place situated right to the north of the Plains of Thessaly.  The what you say?  The Plains of Thessaly was been the crossroads for every Greek movement or invasion since, I was going to say 'Jesus played firsts for Jerusalem', but it's even been longer than that, maybe since 'Adam ate the wrong fruit' would be a more adept saying.  Meteora is special due to what occurred along time after these Greek forays.  For starters, the area that is now Meteora was once under the sea (as I suppose every other bit of land once was).  Due to this and then the changes to the techtonic plates moving upwards this type of land became exposed.  The rain and wind now attacked this exposed and left behind what we see today; spires and butte's and mesa's and caves.  Sometime during the 1200's, Hermits started to use the natural caves as shelter.  This developed further into a way of living; giving yourself upto God and reling on Him to supply you with the tools neccesary to survive.  Monks from the Mount Athos area, in the 14th Century, took this a step further and started to build Monastery's on top of these Spires to astonishing affect, 24 in total of which 6 survive today, 2 of which have been continuos working Monastery's since they were built.  Like many things on this Planet that I have read about or seen in books or on TV, this is one that I really, really wanted to see for myself.  Pictures are good but to be able to walk along the paths that these extremists onced used, to see what they have achieved just from having faith (lots of faith mind you) and then to sit and wonder why you would even attempt would what almost seem impossible at the time can only be pondered while you are here.  I am not a religious person, in fact I am quite openly an Atheist, but you really can't help but admire what can be achieved when you have faith in something.  Can you have faith in Beer?
While Audrey and I were there, April 23rd occurred.  Not really that special of a day, unless its your birthday, but for the people of Meteora it means that they perform a yearly ritual.  In one of the caves that is about 20m off of the ground, on the 23rd of April every year for the past 200 odd years, the men climb up the face of the rock and place womens scarves.  While they are there they bring back the previous years scarves and then distrubute them to the local young people in the hope that they can then find their true love.  We knew nothing about it when we arrived and it was good to indulge for a while and it's was also good to see the whole town come out and be apart of the yearly event.