Tue 05.04.2011 – We all met out the front of the hotel on our bikes packed up ready to roll. A local journo turned up, took our picture and promised we would be in the local rag in the next day. Wonder if we were? We decided that we would follow Darren and Phil out of town and take the coast road instead of the motorway. Not long out of town Darren & Phil (both on Blackbirds) forgot that we were two up and they literally took off, leaving us out of sight. They slowed and we caught up. After a few wrong turns (due to Tom our GPS having an off day), we decided to go our own ways so as not to hold up Darren & Phil on their Blackbirds. We then headed onto the motorway and made for Salonika, which was on the way for our planned overnight destination of Kalambaka, which is a small town of about 7,000 people and its claim to fame is it is about 5 km from Meteora, that is famous as having both monasteries & nunneries built on top of rock spires. Meteora is almost the geographic centre of Greece. Being the off season, we booked into the Hotel Meteora and paid only 35 Euro (about $50) per night including breakfast.

Wed 06.04.2011 - We have both seen photos of Meteora when we were students of these buildings perched atop of sheer rock spires, so for us the trip had excitement & promise. After breakfast (the yogurt was to die for) we rode the bike in a clockwise route from the hotel (where we left our luggage) to Meteora - it was everything we hoped for. We returned to the hotel at about 11.00 am, retrieved our luggage & and then set Tom the chore of taking us safely to our destination of the Athens Lotus Hotel in down town Athens, about 2 km from the Parthenon.