Day 12 - April 23, 2017 (Abby)

We woke up and had breakfast at the hotel around 7am, like always, and then we all just went back to bed because we were tired from the day before. After a while of just dozing around, we finally decided to lazily get up and get ready. I looked around the room, and rounded up all my stuff. We packed our stuff up quickly as all of us were ready for an adventure, except for me. I took my time and eventually they had to drag me out the door
I was still sad that I wasn't going to get a lazy day, but then again, I had to remember that I was in Greece. Olivia tried to cheer me up by showing me the new Snap Chat filters and soon we were laughing out butts off. Before I knew it we were arriving at Corvcian Cave.
                                                      Corycian Cave (Natural Environment)

Corvcian Cave

We arrived at Corycian Cave by 9:40, and I didn't know what to think. Should I be scared of the caves, or excited to see them? When we reached the caves, I asked why we didn't get a tour guide and Jordan explained that the caves were self guided. This made me a little more scared, and I think it did the same to everyone else because we fell into a silence the rest of the hike, which gave me more time to ponder my feelings about this expedition. Upon arriving at the cave, we finally got something out of Tony. Croycian Cave was located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Taking one look into the cave, I knew to be scared because it was so dark. However, there was this little bit of excitement in the back of my mind from being able to feel the rush of descending into the dark cave, and also we had plenty of flashlights. The cave when we first walked looked a little sketchy because was just a dark hole in the side of a hill and also, it felt like it could collapse on us at any moment. After a little arguing with Jordan about being too scared and him calling us chickens, we gave in and made our descent into the cold, dark cave. In the cave, everything echoed, making it was hard to understand people sometimes. Even with this slight problem, I was still able to catch a couple things Hailey said about the cave. The cave was actually excavated by some French archaeologists in 1969, interesting that it wasn't a Grecian. Anyway, this 30 day expidition made by them lead to a lot of antiques and rare objects including a rare Neolithic male figurine, Mycenean shards, bone flutes, iron and bronze rings, miniture bronze statutes, 50,000 terra cotta figurines from the classical period and 24,000 astragoloi, or "knucklebones." In the 5th Century when the Persians attacks, people took refuge in the caves, pretty cool.
Karaouli (Food)

After being in the cave for a while we turned around so we could go back. Gladdie was complaining about being hungry, so we hopped in a car and began to drive to shops to get lunch. We decided on Karaouli for lunch, we didn't know what it sold, but we the smell wafting from the building told us we didn't need to know. I ended up ordering a Greek salad for the restaurant because I wasn't all that hungry as I had big breakfast from the hotel. I don't know what the others got, but my salad was good. Not the best thing I've ever had, but good. It was a quick stop at this place so we could drive to our new hotel to drop our stuff off.
Our next hotel was the Amalia Hotel Kalambaka, and at first look I knew it was going to be a nice hotel. After checking in and putting out luggage in our room, we were out again because we had one more thing left in the day and I was looking forward to a nice afternoon.
We drove to our next destination, Hoisos Loukas, quickly because our taxi driver was a driving madman. We told him to slow down several times, but he wouldn't listen, so we got there in a record time of 5 minutes. We all got out of the car as soon as it stopped, thanking the lord we didn't die.

Ceiling of Hosios Loukas

Hosios Loukas (Culture)
Hosios Loukas was more beautiful than I thought it was going to be, maybe I didn't want this to be a fast look. Upon going inside, we found that the inside of the building was even more marvelous looking than the outside as it was decorated with many paintings all over the walls and ceilings. The exterior had a lot of dome shaped roofs and a lot of browns and orange colors, but the paintings were one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. We flagged one of the workers down to try to gain little more knowledge on the subject and found out that the monastery was founded around the middle of the 10th century AD. We also learned that it was located near the town of Distomo and is considered one of the most important monuments of Middle Byzantine architecture and art. I found it really cool that it has been listed on UNESCO's World Heritage Sites, alongside the monetarists Nea Moni and Daphnion. Deciding not to pester the poor worker anymore, we let him go. I looked up online and found out from Wiki that, "... is the only church known with certainty to have been built in mainland Greece in the tenth century." Thinking about this, I felt curiousness roll throughout my body realizing how old this place actually was. After we walked around and admired the beauty a little more, we decided to get back onto the bus where they gave us amazing food like hamburgers. The meal came with the payment when we got onto the bus in the beginning. After that we went back to the monastery and explored some more. We saw so many more paintings that were just so beautiful. When we finished exploring, we got on a bus and headed to the closest stop near our hotel.
Amalia Hotel Kalambaka
When we got to the hotel it was pretty late, and looking at Jordan's watch I realized it was around 11, later than I thought. We didn't really pay attention to much as we were all just so tired. We rushed to the room where we quickly changed into our sleep wear. We all fell asleep after a long day feeling satisfied.