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Over Pentecost 2020 I took a trip up to Thessaly, mostly to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Meteora. I also went to visit Ropoto, because I couldn't pass up a reportedly abandoned village in the vicinity.

photography greece landscape
The weather on arrival made for dramatic clouds
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On the way up, in Thermopyles. The battlefield of the 300 is nothing much to look at, but some kind (and obviously wealthy) Spartan erected this statue of Leonidas.
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The rain earlier in the day led to some lovely foggy streaks in the valley.
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I planned for five minutes of exposure here. After three minutes, the fog was so thick I couldn't see anything anymore, so I stopped the camera. I'm still happy with the result.
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If this looks familiar, you might remember it from the 1981 James Bond film "For your eyes only".
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According to local folklore, these caves served as prisons for monks who behaved...erm... less than monastically.
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Meteora boasts the oldest evidence of construction in the world - a wall at the mouth of the Theopetra cave dating back some 23000 years. This wall is certainly a lot younger, but it serves the same purpose: Keeping the weather out.
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The bridge outside Kalampaka is probably rarely photographed. With the dry riverbed, I thought it worthy of a picture though.
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This is Ropoto, a village that started sliding down its mountain when the drainage system for rainwater stopped working. Of the several sunken houses I had seen in older pictures, only two remain. Ropoto is - on the whole - back from the dead and inhabited once more.
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The church in Ropoto stands at a 16° angle. I am still surprised at how intact it is - outside and inside, hardly any damage is noticeable.
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This is what the scene looks like with the camera adjusted to the church. When you're inside, your brain refuses to believe that the walls are not upright, and gravity pulls you in completely weird directions.
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Back down in Pyli, saw this cute church and decided to stop by...
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