We left the touristy island and decided to go back to the main land and explore the other beauties that Greece had to offer. My first plan was to drive to Thessaloniki but the more I thought about it the lazier I got about having to drive 6-7 hours all the way there so decided to google something in between to stop kind of on our way to Meteora.

I found the city of Volos but couldn’t really find any decent hotels so I decided to stay 20km away from Volos in the cute little town of Kato Gatzea.

We picked up our rental car after spending one night in Athens and witnessing the festivities of Good Friday. There were processions all over town and they passed right in front of our hotel!

We drove north and as we drove we decided to go down to the water to see the view and ended up in a town called Agios Konstantinos. The beautiful thing about having a rental car is that we could stop anywhere and take as long we wanted. We were surprised with the charm of the town, it had the main church, a port, and a beautiful park with lots of restaurants. It was the perfect stop for lunch!

We then kept going and got to the beautiful town of Kato Gatzea (at this point it felt like the 20 euros in tolls we paid were worth it for the location!) where we stayed in a beautiful family run guesthouse 50m from the beach. This town is not touristy so we were the only non Greek around, or at least it felt that way. 
The waterfront was just beautiful! 

We then drove to a couple of coastal towns a couple of km from Kato gatzea. All the small town had very charming restaurant by the water. The "blueness" of the water was magnificent!

The following day we decided to go up the mountain and check out the little villages up top. It was easter sunday and it seemed like it was a huge celebration! Everywhere we went restaurants and families were roasting lamb for lunch! Driving up the mountain we even saw a women hand turning the animal around, my mom and I had a really good laugh! The poor woman would end up with arm ache since they take hours to cook!

We stopped at the first town, Agios georgios, and it was very cute. I decided to walk around and take pictures while my mom decided to get some breakfast and coffee.

Town's church

Stone roof

Poppies growing in the wilderness

By then we were out of euros so we needed to find an ATM or an exchange place but everything, absolutely everything but restaurants were closed! It was kind of incredible to see how not even supermarkets, corner stores, bakeries or pharmacies were open! I don’t think I have seen that before, not even in Iran, maybe a little bit in Israel on sabbat but not to this extend. No one could buy anything, not even milk or bread because they were all on holidays! Another crazy thing about Greece is that they only work half day! Banks (and many non touristic shops) are open from 8am until 2pm, how crazy is that? At first I thought they would re open after a break but no! You have to wait until the next day! Seems so crazy to me!

We then continued our journey to the cities of Pinakates, Vizitsa, and Millies, all of them super cute mountain towns with cute restaurants, little alleys, and stone roof houses. 

Now off to Meteora!!! Woohoo