Day 4 - Traveling through Thermopylae to Kalambaka

Easter Sunday was a travel day for us. Due to the holiday once again the streets of Athens were empty of traffic making the drive easy. 

We even had the highways pretty much to ourselves. 

Once leaving Athens the landscape is very green and has varying terrain from rolling hills to steep mountains. 

We drove for a bit over 2 hours before stopping to view a memorial of Leonidas and Sparta 300 in Thermopylae. 

There is a movie about this famous battle called '300'. We will definitely watch it now. 

The monument is a symbol of Greek selflessness, sacrifice, and obedience to the laws of the country.

Shortly after visiting the monument, we stopped for our first coffee break. Unfortunately, due to the holiday it was closed so we moved a short distance to the next and it was closed. We moved on to a third and although the sign on the door said closed for Easter they did let us in to use the facilities...whew. I asked Nadine why our tour was "The Best of Greece Reverse" and she explained that due to the holiday many attractions close early, so they changed the order of our stops to make sure they were open on our arrival.  When we booked the tour we did not realize that the Greek Orthodox calendar had Easter a week after the Roman Catholic calendar. 

We continued on and reached our lunch stop at the Kanelis Village Restaurant. This was a traditional Greek Easter meal of lamb, red eggs, Greek appetizers and sweet dessert. It was an unexpected treat provided by Trafalgar because it was Easter. It was a very nice gesture by Trafalgar.

We arrived in Kalambaka around 16:30PM and checked into the Amalia Hotel. Dinner was planned for  19:30 so after we settled into our rooms we met at the bar for a beer and then took a short walk before dinner. 

We had another very nice dinner which included more traditional Lamb and a plentiful buffet. We planned to walk off our dinner but it was raining, so we did a few laps inside the hotel. The Amalia is a huge hotel so it was a pretty good walk. 

Tomorrow we will visit a couple monestaries in Meteora in the morning and then travel in the afternoon to Dephi.