We had specially requested a higher floor room in our Monodendri booking thinking a second floor room would give us even better views......which it did......but it was also yet more stairs so we got those thrown in as well....... Honestly we should all have calves of steel by the end of this trip! This is the first time we've all been in a room together but even though it was a two night stay there seemed to be plenty of room. It helped also that our bathroom habits in terms of preferred shower times etc differ enough that there really weren't any of the issues one
might have expected with three women to a bathroom. Unfortunately there was no wifi to the bedrooms there but we worked around that by doing our emailing etc in the courtyard downstairs before and after breakfast so it wasn't too bad.....It's good to stop and realise how spoilt we are now with our instant communication facilities with email, Skype and the rest ..... none of the waiting for letters and/or the occasional crackle filled conversation of a phone call from overseas to reassure you loved ones are safe needed these days......as Greg reminded me the other day, imagine in the war when there was such genuine fear for partners and
family members and sometimes no contact for months and months on end.....horrible to think of...... Monodendri is a gorgeous hillside village with its light grey stone buildings - the council "dress code" for homes must be pretty strict as no individualism is evident! Liane and I had one of our little back street strolls in the evening, which really isn't code for we got lost, it's more that we like to explore our options of any given route.......and I'm sticking to that story ....but yes even on our slight detour on the way to the village square from our hotel we didn't see any deviations from the norm. We have been incredibly lucky with the weather;  I commented to our host in Monodendri, Marios, that we had picked the best time of year to visit what with the gorgeous autumn leaves. He nodded, smiled and shrugged before telling us that usually now it would be raining and that the weather really was extraordinarily good ....so yes most fortunate. I had the amusing experience of being mistaken for a Greek when sitting
in the (darkened which no doubt was the reason for the error!) lounge one evening at our hotel. Gwendols and I were sitting chatting when a couple entered from outside, I smiled at them and said kalispera and the woman then bombarded me with Greek....the only real word I recognised was the one for rooms which I repeated to her, gaining her confused nod, before I called out rather desperately for Penelope the girl who worked there..... Funny! The Zagori region of Greece is undoubtedly spectacular with it's hill villages and mountain ranges and the captivating stone bridges that are just so picturesque. To my mind the whole thing is incredibly enhanced by the array of oranges, reds, yellows and browns of the falling and fallen leaves ......everywhere looks like a jigsaw puzzle picture....it is just beautiful! The gorge itself is incredible, and rather confronting to look down into, not to Liane though of course. She persists in frightening the wits out of Gwendols and I with her daredevil activities of perching on ledges and climbing thin mountain paths......I know Mum....I AM trying....but she just won't
listen to me!!! Possibly my favourite thing though, on this part of our trip, was the Stone Forest which is not far from Monodendri. It is an area with scattered autumn trees and dotted amongst them are hillocks of stone of differing sizes and shapes.....some quite large, some quite small, some random shaped and some shaped like beehives, all different from each
other and yet because of their substance all the same......They are truly amazing geological formations of horizontally layered stone, possibly some sort of slate maybe? They are wonderful to see and touch and really took my breath away....It is the sort of place one can easily imagine ancient cultures having a dreamtime like story attached to as it had such a mystical feel about it. Definitely a place I won't forget in a hurry.....

(L) Breakfast in the morning was once again inside but luckily no smokers, Marios must have picked up on our distaste for smokers cos he apologised for the man the previous evening. He was a most attentive host (although not nearly so much as Aris) and not only noticed Deb struggling with a sore back, bringing her pillows and swapping chairs for her but also remembered my "no meat" conversation and brought me a toasted cheese sandwich whilst the girls both got Ham and Cheese. The table was groaning with food and we did our best to eat as much as possible so as to not offend Marios. He brought it all out to our table, as opposed to everywhere else where it's been more a buffet style affair, we had, boiled eggs, 2 or 3 different breads/toast, cakes, fruit, yoghurt, and croissants... yes we're all coming home a size or two larger!!! I'm not sure if I mentioned it but apart from the Hotel in Gefira we have had breakfast included in our room rate everywhere we've stayed. Today we decided to find the stone bridges that the Zagori area is famous for so when Marios asked us at breakfast what we were doing today we told him just that and he suggested we head to Kipi (say Keepe) which confirmed our previous nights google search!! Very easy to follow the road signs but of course we had the ever helpful Jane along to make sure we didn't go astray. Just driving along we saw a Brown tourist sign so pulled over and sure enough there was a stone bridge, nice of them to make it so easy for us to find! Just as we were leaving a car with 2 couples pulled in.. they ended up "stalking" us all morning as they obviously had the same day planned... at each stop we'd start chatting a bit more to them and found out they were Swiss. At Kipi we stopped for a coffee and loo break and once again they pulled into the village. The stone bridges are all gorgeous and I'll let the photos do the talking there. The last one however said 1000m (which is a km right?!) so off we started saying "we won't go all the way, we'll just look at it from up here" but down, down, down we trekked trying not to think of the fact that what goes down must come up and Gwendoline chiming in with "YOLO" as we'd round another set of switchback stairs to find yet another in front of us... then of course the "are we there yet" chants started but we'd come too far to turn back without seeing this bridge so "it better be the best bridge we've ever seen" became the next mantra........ anyway after what seemed like 5kms later we finally got a glimpse of this bridge and yes it was pretty but not the best!!! "OK.. we've seen it,can we go get lunch now"?? "I could eat"... "yes I could eat" and then the long climb to the top, lungs bursting, heart thumping, legs burning... breathe in through the nose 1,2,3,4 out through the mouth 1,2,3,4 stopping for a rest... NO PHOTO GJ would call so on we pushed until finally... VICTORY!!! We had wanted to get an early lunch ( well not really early but 1ish) but it was about 2.30 by the time we got back to the Monodendri square and to the same restaurant we had lunch yesterday, the girls wanted to try the meat on the spit. Another wonderful meal of Greek Salad, Tzatziki, bread, wine etc with the girls having the pork and chicken total bill was EU 30 with tip .. usually if the bill is say 26.50 we'll just leave 30 if it's closer to 30 we leave 35 but only of course if the meal is yummy and service is good. Back to the hotel for a quick shower (believe me we needed it after all that walking), rest and blog time then a drive back to the village to walk the 600m down to the gorge, yes I know we've seen the gorge but not from this end, so we saw the sun setting and raced back up to the village before dark then drove back up to the Hotel. We could have walked this but we'd done so much walking and there are no lights in those tiny cobbled laneways so didn't want to be stumbling back after dark. The Taverna we had chosen for dinner was closed so we very relucantly went into another one and sat down, the server was an extremely pregnant woman who looked like she had barely enough energy to walk, dinner was ordinary to say the least, well that's putting it kindly.. GJ just wanted Greek Salad, you can't go wrong with that right?? Well yes you can if the feta is so off I could smell it from the other side of the table. Just as we were finishing she turned all the lights off inside... we get the hint. We had to go back to our hotel, order more wine so GJ could have some dinner... after dinner!!! Upstairs fairly early to get packed up for our move on to Kastraki and the monasteries of Meteora. Not sure if I mentioned before but this was the first place the 3 of us shared a room because we booked it so long ago when we thought we'd be all three in the same room for the whole trip, it worked fine except Gwendols got a sofa bed which almost ate her in the night!! The second night she had to put her mattress on the floor but she could have had a room to herself because when Marios saw us coming in the first afternoon he came running out to ask why had we packed up the sofa bed, was it not comfortable, could he offer us another room??