May 2014 (Part 3 of 3, Mount Athos)

The next monastery was the largest and richest on Holy Mount Athos.  I don't know if the word "rich" or "money" is compatible with religion, but this is what we were told about the monastery.  Please note that the monastery has a guard post on the road from Karyes, where the guard checks the visitor names against his list and their permits or "diamonitiria".  I don't know why, but it seems that in this monastery there are a lot of Cypriot visitors.  The monastery was very big with huge buildings and a lot of monks, but it was also very tidy and clean (like every monastery we went, the surrounding paths and rivers are a different story).  We were put in a room with three other guys from Cyprus, nice guys, we had a lot of fun for one day with them and we laughed a lot.  

May 2014 (Part 2 of 3, Mount Athos)

The following morning we had an early rise to catch the bus to Ouranoupolis where we would then take the ferryboat to Dafni, then the bus to Karyes and finally one of the mini busses to Megisti Lavra Monastery.  The morning resembled something coming out of a fairy tale with pink clouds and blue skies as the sun slowly found its way above the mountains.  Almost everyone was sleeping in the bus (or was sleepy like us), but from time to time there were voices talking about that spectacular morning.

May 2014 (Part 1 of 3 Meteora and Thessaloniki)

A couple of months ago I returned from a trip to Meteora and Holy Mount Athos and it was only a few weeks ago when I finished processing my shots.  I came home with over 2.500 photos shot in 9 days, and I estimated I was shooting one shot every 3.5 minutes excluding the time I went to sleep!  It's a large amount of data and some of the photos are not good, some of them are going to be merged together for panoramas or exposure blending.  Basically I was walking with the camera in my hands and my lens on my backpack almost all the time, except when I was getting really tired and giving up for the day (and even then, I occasionally regretted not going out to shoot some more).