After a couple days climbing up to what felt like the top of the world over in Meteora, we all decided to take a circuitous route back to Preveza through the Greek town of Ioánnina.
Why you ask?
We didn’t go to Ioánnina for it’s famous Lake Pamvotis—which indeed was quite lovely and incidentally was graced with a bevy of swans. This made us nostalgic for the days when our hometown back in Oregon used to have swans basking in the ponds at our local park.
Nor did we head to Ioánnina for its castle which was built in the 6th century. This large towering structure sweeps through a good part of the town, which we can all attest to as we spent a significant amount of time walking around both the inside and outside of it’s massive walls. It is said to be the oldest Byzantine fortress in Greece. We were impressed but that wasn’t the lure either.
Not even for the Fetiche Mosque which rises proudly into the spring sky and recalibrates eyes which have become accustomed to a Greek palette of churches and ruins.
All very enticing attractions indeed. But we were the weirdos who showed up to hike down into the local cave of Perama. It seems we needed more stairs—but this time instead of ascending heavenward like we did in Meteora, we trekked down into the bowels of the earth just so we could trudge back up.
The caves were so unexpected—which are often our favorite kind of adventure.
Here’s to burning calves and unconventional Greek odysseys. A maniacal recipe for magic.
