My Big Fat Greek Adventure, Part 1: Thessaloniki, Mt. Olympus, & Meteora

We weren't planning on traveling for Spring Break, afterall, it feels like we just arrived to Kyiv! But then there was a crazy deal on airfare and a bit of research showed that spring in Greece is the best time to visit (if you want to avoid the heat and crowds), not to mention that Funny Guy is a walking encyclopedia of Greek mythology (thanks Rick Riordan), so we decided, why not?!

Athens is less than 3 hours from Kyiv, but it took us a bit longer to fly up to Thessaloniki where we rented a car to drive down to our Airbnb rental in Leptokarya, at the base of Mount Olympus.

We stopped for dinner on the beach before heading to the house for bed.  That was when we discovered that Darling Daughter had forgotten to bring her sweatshirt.  And I had grossly underestimated how cold the wind chill would be.  Still, it was beautiful and we soaked in the waves, the castle up on the hill, the sunset.  We were really in Greece!

The next morning, we split up.  We dropped My Man off to meet a group of paragliders, then the kids and I drove up into Mt. Olympus National Park to hike part of the Mt. Olympus summit trail.

 The weather was cool and threatening rain, but we set off anyway, undeterred.

Originally I'd hoped to hike from the trailhead in Prionia down to Litochoro, but realized that might be too ambitious for the younger kids.

Instead, we opted to hike from Prionia on the E4 trail to the old Monastery and then back.  It was perfect and allowed plenty of time for stopping to climb rocks, look at bugs, and take pictures.  (For someone with even smaller hikers and two adults, it would be possible to drop off hikers at Prionia, then drive back down to the monastery and leave the car there, hiking up to meet the rest of the group to make the hike even shorter.)

The trail was gorgeous, along a raging creek, through forest, with lots of rocks to climb and flowers to admire and interesting terrain.

By the time we got to the monastery, sadly ruined by Nazis in WWII, but undergoing some renovations now, Funny Guy was starting to tire and the rain that had been threatening all day began to fall more seriously.

Cold, wet, and a little tired, we opted to head back on the road for a shorter trip and were rewarded by seeing several dramatically colored newts (which Young Man gallantly scooped from the road to save from unhappy martyrdom by the cars).  One was so grateful for the help that he climbed right up Young Man's leg.

The kids were real troopers and didn't complain at all in spite of the cold rain.  I guess it was a small price to pay to hike on Zeus' mountain.  It may have helped that we played one million games of I Spy and Contact and laughed and laughed and laughed.  I may also have resorted to a super secret stash of Cadbury chocolate eggs, AKA energy capsules, to help ward off melt-downs.  By the time we got back to the car, this was our view:

Still, when asked if they would do it again, all three kids gave a resounding "YES!" and so would I.  In fact, I hope I have the chance to go back some day and hike the full trail, hopefully not in the rain.  

Meanwhile, the weather hadn't cooperated for My Man either.  He and the other paragliders had a chance to check out the launch and got one quick flight but then the rain interrupted any plans to fly more so My Man was forced to enjoy a delicious lunch with a gorgeous ocean view.

By the time we got back home, though, the sky was starting to clear, so we joined My Man to head back up to the local paragliding launch.  At the top of the hill there is an old church, more than 600 years old actually.  "That's older than the United States!" My Man exclaimed.  His instructor laughed and said, "Everything in Greece is older than the United States!"  As if to prove the point, My Man ran off the mountain, then flew off toward the beach, circling around a beautiful old castle along the way.

That evening, Funny Guy and I took a walk to the beach, where we spent the rest of the evening watching the sun set and practicing skipping rocks into the calm water.  It was beautiful.

The next morning, the kids and I had to leave before the crack of dawn to drive inland to Meteora, a collection of old monasteries perched dramatically and sometimes precipitously on giant rock outcrops.

After some interesting GPS instructions, we managed to arrive just in time to join our hiking tour.  It was fantastic.

The guide had grown up in the area and knew every legend, story, and trail.

He pointed out interested old trees, told stories about the wild boars in the area, and pointed out good photo ops.

He put up with the sibling squabbling that accompanied our three kiddos and told so many good stories that Funny Guy forget to get tired until the 5-hour tour was finished.

We saw several of the old monasteries and went inside the Great Meteoron Monastery.

Although I probably would have explored more extensively if I'd been there on my own, the kids were ready to head home after our tour, understandably tired out after two days of hiking.  It was a great outing, though, and we all highly recommend the Visit Meteora tours.  The day was beautiful, warm and sunny, no evidence of the previous day's rain, so after we got home, we prepared an early picnic dinner to eat outside.  After a few minutes, we heard My Man.  What?  The kids started looking around to see where he was.  I looked up.

Sure enough, there he was soaring high above our picnic on his way to a beach landing.  Funny Guy and I hopped in the car to go pick him up.  Incredibly, he was finishing an epic cross-country flight from the other side of Mt. Olympus!

It was the longest flight of his career, and arguably the coolest.  I couldn't believe that he managed to fly directly over our house from so far away!  And landing on the beach, with the beautiful red poppies waving in the breeze and the beautiful blue ocean behind was really the perfect ending.

My Man pointing to Mt. Olympus (where he started the flight) and then to the beach where he landed.

Sadly, it was the last paragliding day until the end of the trip, but it was a flight to remember.

That evening, My Man and I visited Platamon Castle, then ate out at a traditional Greek Taverna with the other paragliding pilots who were visiting from Switzerland.  Just bring us your very best, they told the restaurant owner when he came to get our orders.  What arrived was a sampling of mouth-watering salads, cheeses, and meats.  The five of us feasted and feasted and still couldn't finish it all.  It was the perfect ending to the first segment of our Greek vacation.  If we had had to leave Greece and go home right then, it would have been worth it.  Lucky for us, however, we still had almost a week left!

The next morning we drove up to Thessaloniki, traded our rental car for a spot on the train, and headed down to Athens for our Big Fat Greek Adventure, Part 2.  

Exploring Paradise: Chiang Dao

A picture from our daily commute.

Sometimes when you live in a place, and the daily grind keeps you busy day in and day out, waking up early, getting the kids off to school, commuting to and from work, grocery shopping, meetings, and more, it is easy to forget you live in paradise. Sometimes, in fact, paradise can seem dirty and hot and crowded and hectic.  That's when it's time for an adventure--it just takes a day of exploring outside of the city for all of the dust and monotony to fall away.

Driving to Chiang Dao, I had to keep interrupting my read-aloud of Harry Potter, book 7 (much to our kids' dismay--I always seemed to manage to get distracted at crucial points) to gawk and exclaim about the incredible jungle or rice fields or mountains or temples or water buffalo or bird-sized butterfly flitting past the window.

The hillside in northern Thailand is just so beautiful these days, freshly out of the rainy season as we are.

When we arrived to our first destination, the Chiang Dao caves, My Man and the kids were convinced we'd somehow ended up at one of our earlier destinations--it looked so much like the strange temple we visited in the country near Chiang Rai earlier this year. But it was not.

There was a beautiful spring-fed koi pond with gigantic fish and crystal clear water.

There were women weaving grass baskets. There were dogs, including a rowdy group of new puppies (oh so tempting . . . ). 

There was a beautiful old stupa, where we were amazed to see a sign claiming an origin of 191AD (turns out it was a mistranslation, My Man, our resident Thai-reading expert, found out it was actually build in 1910--still old, but much more believable!).

Finally we made our way to the cave where we paid a small admission fee to go in. We opted for the lit path way (once inside the cave you can pay for a guide with a lantern to take you deeper into the cave. We have heard it takes 1-2 hours for that trip and gets dirty with some crawling and tight spaces).

The cave was wonderful and cool, though it is not as well preserved as we'd have liked, there were still some active stalactite formations.

After the cave, we went on a jungle hike. It was awesome until we started being attacked mercilessly by giant mosquitoes. Somehow I'd forgot our repellent in the car, so we hurried back, slapping ourselves silly along the way.

The temple structures were also interesting. We especially liked the three-headed snake.

Finally, hot and dusty, we returned to the sanctuary of our car and cool, sweet air conditioning. We snacked on cucumbers and granola bars as we wound our way further up the mountain and through the national forest. It was beautiful and as we climbed the views just got more and more breath taking.  The best part about trips like this though?  Check out My Man and Young Man in the pics below (I can't even remember the joke, but this is what it is all about, making memories and laughing together):

We didn't have a specific destination in mind--we were just driving and drinking it all in (and reading whenever I could tear my eyes from the verdant vistas and wasn't too carsick from all the switchbacks). 

After a few hours of driving, we consulted our dear friend Google to see if we could loop our way home or would have to turn around. It looked iffy, but we decided to go for it. Unfortunately, our one-way trail eventually dead-ended in a construction site and we had to turn around. It had started to rain so there were some interesting sections of mud and creeks running over the "road" that we had to ford. We definitely put the 4-wheel drive to the test and got out of there covered in glorious war paint mud splatters, proof of our incredible adventure outside the city.

To top it all off, as we headed home, starving after that adrenaline-filled episode, we spied a roadside vendor grilling what looked like ribs. I hopped out and bought a couple for our meat-loving boys. Turns out they weren't ribs. Or rather they were, but not beef or pork. Each skewer comprised three or four sets of little ribs. We decided they must be some version of rodent, squirrel maybe? Or ROUS (rodents of unusual size)?  Either way, the boys all agreed, they were delicious. Turns out they were field rats. Yum. 

Young Man wouldn't let us eat this little guy though.

And that, my friends, is what a northern Thai adventure looks like, local-style.