The Monasteries of Meteora, Greece

I've never had a great memory for places I've never visited before. For me, they always exist in the abstract--somewhere alongside Hogwarts and the Gumdrop Mountains from Candy Land. 

I'm sure at some point in my life I've heard of Meteora, but until we spotted it on our map of Lonely Planet's top 100 places to visit, I never knew where it was or considered going. We threw in the five-hour train ride to Meteora in central Greece almost as an afterthought. 

And that's crazy, because Meteora is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen in my life. In my opinion, it's just as cool as the Acropolis, made more amazing by the fact that far, far less tourists visit this destination, since it's a bit out of the way.

Meteora is a formation of massive monolithic columns, topped with monasteries built as early as the 14th century. It made me think of my brother Justin and my sister-in-law Tania constantly, since he's a geologist and she is a structural engineer--the perfect combination.

The pictures below don't do this UNESCO World Heritage site justice. 

We aren't really "tour group" people, but we ended up doing both a five-hour sunset tour as well as another five-hour day tour to learn the history of the monks who lived in and on the rocks, and the people who lived in the villages below. 

The beauty of the huge rocks coupled with some excellent meals made Meteora another wonderful stop on our journey.