Heading to Meteora today, not really sure what to expect, although I have heard it is place on top on the cliffs of Thessaly that inspired the setting for Game of Thrones' Eyrie of the Vale of the House of Arryn, as well as having some of the last six remaining 14th century monasteries (out of 24). It'll be about a 4 or 5 hour drive there today, so another half day on the coach before we will reach Meteora We had a little bit of a sleep in this morning, with not needing to be ready to go until 8:20, we rose at about 6:30 giving us all a chance to get showered and our bags packed before heading downstairs for some breakfast. After which it was onto the bus and off we went. Not a very busy trip along the way, we listened to some music for the first couple of hours, and after our first stop put on Kung Fu Panda to watch. After which we listened to some music until we reached Meteora. Now the cliffs themselves are spectacular to look at, but seeing them with Monasteries on top of them just made them that more spectacular. To build the monasteries they used to lift all the materials in baskets to the top. Time consuming, but I guess back then it was the simplest way to do it, these days they still transport stuff in baskets, but mechanical baskets that usually are just transporting food or other supplies across. I can't really go into much explanation about these monasteries, without seeing them you can't get the full picture, tunnels carved into the rock, the old kitchens, bones and skulls, and then their little churches inside he monasteries were just amazing. Unfortunately I couldn't get any photos from within the church's, but they were pretty cool, I loved the art work inside and one had a spectacular chandelier inside. One of the monasteries even had a museum containing some old gospels dating back to the 11th century (who knows there may be some even older). The views from the different monasteries were astonishing as well. We made our way to our hotel which had a great view looking up at the cliffs and one of the monasteries. The hotel itself was a very nice looking hotel, marble floors a large pool and I already mentioned the views. The pool itself was packed, so very little room for us to lay around the pool and relax unless we were in the sun, turns out that it was pretty well much just locals using it, despite us asking the people in the hotel if it they were hotels guests or locals and them saying that they were all staying there. We sat around the pool for a while and had a drink or two along with taking a quick swim. We headed off to dinner, which started off with spaghetti which had a dollop of sauce and a tiny bit of parmesan cheese, most of the others asked for more sauce, cause it was only like a teaspoon of sauce that they put on it. Second course of dinner was a coleslaw salad with some olive oil. I didn't even touch that as I don't like coleslaw that much... Third course was perfect, Chicken and Chips. I polished mine of fairly quickly and after a few minutes I decided I would retire to my room as I was feeling really sick and wanted to try and sleep it off, not sick from food, but from a cold that's been circulating do itself around everyone on the tour. It's basically a cough with a blocked nose and lots of mucus, not nice at all. I got to my room and struggled to get to sleep due to the heat of the room. The aircon is useless as the coldest setting just felt like a fan blowing air around the room. I ended up sleeping on the floor with no covers to keep me cold and had my legs under the bed touching the cool marble floor.