Nats and Mount Popa.

Popa Taungkalat Monastery.

From the dry, arid plains of Bagan, our drive took is into the mountains.  Temperature wise, it wasn't all that much cooler but the air felt cleaner.  I think we were just away from all the dust that's constantly stirred up by cars on the streets running through Bagan.

Here, we got to experience a bit of tropical forest.  For a few minutes, I felt like we were back in Thailand.

Land of the Golden Pagodas. Myanmar.

Buddhist monks in queue for the meal at the monastery Kha Khat Wain Kyaung in Bago.
(Photo by Hans A. Rosbach.  Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.)

I've wanted to travel to Myanmar, nicknamed *Land of the Golden Pagodas*, for more than 30 years.  It was around 1985  that I met the first person I ever knew from Burma - she was my colleague at the IMF and we stayed in good touch until she retired.  We used to have shared a lot of good times and good laughs.  As well, her husband who is also from the same homeland was the architect on my kitchen extension and renovation project.  Over the years, M introduced to her Burmese friends.

Memories of Greece and Turkey.

Posing in front of the Parthenon, atop the Acropolis in Athens.

Yasas! Merhaba! Hello! This is the diary of my trip to Greece and Turkey in 2014, my brother's and my annual trip this year.

We had a fantastic time and I was so relieved about that!  Since I was retired, I had time to plan each and every day of this 28 trip!  It was a LOT of research and planning  - I think I set a personal record for how much time and effort it took!  But, I am proud to say that from a logistics perspective, everything went smoothly - our flights arrived on time, our rental cars were waiting for us as promised, our accommodations all worked out - from hotels to guesthouses to apartments.

Ruins and Puppets.

At the Temple of the Olympian Zeus.

After our snack/lunch at the eateries near the New Acropolis Museum, Bro and I decided to take the short walk to our next sightseeing point - the ruins of the Temple of the Olympian Zeus.

Making it to the Big City.

At Athens Central Market doing what he loves to do - buying fruit!

Today, we finally made it to Athens! We'll be here for the next couple of days.

We left Kamena Vourla at 8:30a this morning. We had to return the rental car by 11:30a and even though the drive would only take us about an hour and a half, Bro was keen and eager to get on the road.

Layover. Kamena Vourla.

When I was planning this trip, I realized it was a long drive from Meteora to Athens. I didn't know how much time we would be spending at Meteora so I decided to not push things and break up the journey back to Athens. I looked at the map and literally tried to find a place that was between Meteora and Athens. I explored a few options but in the end, settled on Kamena Vourla, a small seaside town on the North Euboean Gulf. I figured after all the driving we had done, it would be nice to have one last opportunity to relax by the sea before heading to the big city.

Meteora. Varlaam and St. Nicholas Monasteries.

At St. Nicholas Monastery.

 After visiting Grand Meteoron, it was on to Varlaam Monastery, located less than a minute's drive from Grand Meteoron.  Varlaam is accessed from a narrow bridge that leads in from the main road.  The bridge connected two boulders and at the end, we once again had to climb a set of steep steps.  Yikes!

Meteora. Grand Meteoron Monastery.

My turn to be in front of the camera :-)

 I woke up bright and early this morning. Not quite well rested. I think the room was a tad too warm for me last night.....don't sleep well unless I'm chilled :-)

Bro was still asleep and since we weren't in a rush, I let him snooze a bit longer before rustling him awake.

On High. Meteora.

Posing with Varlaam Monastery in the background.

As interesting as it was visiting the museum at Delphi was, I'm really eager to get on the road because what I think will be the highlight of our road trip through Greece lies just ahead. 

It was nearing 10am as we pulled away from the museum.  Goodbye Delphi!

Trip Planning and Resources.

The *papers*, minus passport, that I'm bringing with me on this trip.

The year was 2006.  The trip was Peru.  My first in ages.  Although I was doing a conducted tour with G Adventures (then known as Gap Adventures), I still had to do a bit of planning.  My resource?  A Roughs Guide book on Peru.  That was it.  Next trip was Egypt and Jordan and two more guide books.  After that it was India, Nepal, and Tibet and three more guidebooks.  This trip I have no guidebook except for the two Lonely Planet books I bought back in 2008 when I first went to Turkey. 

Packing List. Greece and Turkey.

Image from The Goddess of the Hunt

Planning for this trip has gone remarkably smooth - probably because I don't have work to get in the way :-)

Even though we're quite a lot of weeks away from departing, it's not to early to put together my packing list....at least, it's not early for an obsessive planner like me as I hate leaving packing to the last minute.

Greece & Turkey. Itinerary

Feels like it's been ages since I've posted up anything on this travelogue but aside from a three week visit to California during which time I thought little about this trip, I have been flushing out the details for the trip.  The actual trip dates were finalized months ago when Bro got his leave request approved.

As of today, we have our plane tickets.  Our flight route has us arriving into Athens and departing from Istanbul.  As always, I got Bro's tickets first and then managed to find a flight for me that basically has us both on the same flight from NYC to Athens and on the return, from Istanbul to Amsterdam.

Then, came the day by day itinerary breakdown.  We'll be renting a car and driving ourselves around on a road trip through ancient Greece - Olympia, Delphi and last but not least,  Kastraki/Kalambaka where we will spend our time visiting the famous monasteries at Meteora .  Kalambaka is the name of the larger town - we'll actually be bunking down in the smaller, neighboring village of Kastraki.  I just hope it's not too small a village, at least large enough to have a restaurant would be good so we don't have to go far to find dinner.

I put together the Greece road trip following similar routes offered by tour groups except we'll be book ending our drive with stays in two seaside towns - Nafplio and Kemena Vourla.  If there's any time to go off the beaten path and check out some smaller villages, we'll definitely take the opportunity to do that.

We'll only make it Athens six days into our trip and will be staying at an Airbnb apartment located in the heart of the city.  We'll no longer have the car so we'll make our way around by subway or taxi.

Saying goodbye to Athens, we'll then head to a Greek island.  I've not worked out the details yet because the ferry schedules for when we will be traveling have not yet been issued.  The tentative plan is to fly to Santorini and then go by ferry to Syros, Samos, finally arriving into Kuşadası which will be our entry point into Turkey.  Although the itinerary for this one portion of the trip is still very much up in the air, I went ahead and booked all the hotels.  Fortunately, I can change hotel booking dates/cancel without penalty up until about a week our arrival date.

Meteora.

Moni Agias Varvaras Rousanou at Meteora (Photo from goista.com)

Kalambaka is a small town located about 350 kilometers from Athens.  The main reason for going to Kalambaka is to visit Meteora.  When I first saw images of Meterora, I thought it was a single monastery atop a freestanding boulder.  But in fact, it's a complex of monasteries located near Kalambaka and the neighboring town of Kastraki.