Food and wine in Thessaly

After a long day of hiking and visiting monasteries, we had another full but very different day in the Thessaly region of Greece. Here’s a map showing the town of Kalambaka, which is the closest town to Meteora and very geared toward tourism. We stayed in the nearby city of Kastraki, which is really nestled in the rocks, as seen from the last photo in the Meteora post. The region is called Thessaly, and in addition to the rocks and monasteries, the land is very abundant and the food and wine are excellent.

We are branching out a bit this trip and taking more tours than we usually do on vacation – which is proving to be a great way to get some more local info and sights in! On Wednesday, we took a food and wine tour of the area with a local guide. So far our guides have all been named Vangalis (one Vangalis and one Evan) and George / Georgina. I digress, but after going years without meeting anyone named George, I’m declaring 2021 the year of George. I suddenly work with 3 people named George, Miles’s roommate is a Georgina, and we have had at least 2 Georges and a Georgina guide here. Anyway… George of Thessaly brought us first to a hermit cave. There is a progression of cave dwelling that goes from shepherd’s shelter to hermit cave to monastery.

This hermit cave is very well maintained and is visited by local people once a year on Easter, where services are held.

After the hermit cave, we drove to a local vineyard and had an intro to wine making in the region with a really nice young winemaker.

We chatted, sipped some wine and ate nibbles for a bit, then moved on to a roadhouse kind of restaurant in the area. There, we had quite a delicious feast! First, we had wild greens with bread and tzatziki (Greek yogurt dish that often has cucumber and herbs blended in, though this one seems pretty straight yogurt and I’ve had so many meals since I’m not remembering exactly what was in this yogurt!) George looked up the greens on his phone and it looked like dandelion to me, which I’ve heard about people eating the wild versions of (as opposed to the poor beat up versions in front of our house!) but haven’t tried myself.

Then we had a homemade sausage and green peppers dish – and with this and the next meat dish incorporating the meat, yogurt and bread into one bite whenever possible.

And then lamb chops. You’ll see chips / French fries there too – very often served with any main dish in Greece! (Spoiler alert – last night our guide intervened with the waiter and let us know we could substitute fried zucchini/courgette for the chips! Which we happily did.)

Dessert was a lovely quince compote with walnuts – served as a “spoon sweet.” Spoon sweets are really popular – they are a preserve that can be dolloped onto a serving of yogurt and make a really tasty but not too overwhelming dessert. And since this quince made an appearance, we have had quince numerous times. I think it’s quince season!

After this lunch (!) wrapped up around 1:30, we headed off for our next destination which was the town of Makrinitsa in the Pelion peninsula. You might think wow how did they drive on such full stomachs?! While there was a ton of tasting going on, we really didn’t have to eat huge volumes, so it was all fine. However, we are noticing that our regularly scheduled meals are a bit out of sync in this part of the world where lunch is a very big meal mid-afternoon and dinner might happen at 8 or 9 pm. OR LATER!!! It’s pretty hard to change one’s tummy rhythms for just 10 days though… so we’re kinda all over the place on eating times.

The drive to Pelion (pronounced by everyone as more like Pelio) was over some very flat land, with a sudden rise up into mountains at the very end. And just like Delphi to Meteora, we suddenly got fog and rain, making for interesting mountain driving! Here’s the big view of the drive – very straightforward! As for the warning that this route has tolls, oh yes it does. Lots. All the time. The passenger / navigator’s big job along here was loose change management!

Then after the big long flat roads end at Volos, the road starts to look like intestines. Switchback central! And note this is the main route to Makrinitsa – we later discovered a way of getting up there taking smaller roads! It made the “main route” seem really easy.

Our destination of Makrinitsa is a pedestrian town, so the end of the directions here is a parking lot outside the town entrance, and from there you walk into the town. What the map doesn’t show is that all of these sites marked with pins on the map below are locations on the side of a mountain, connected with traditional kalderimia or cobblestone paths and more modern staircases. More on this in the next post, but if you’re envisioning an Escher drawing, definitely not as chaotic or disorienting but yes that crossed our minds too!