The Perama cave is 2 km from Ioannina and if you are in the area it is well worth a visit. The cave was discovered in 1940 when the villagers were taking shelter from the bombing during WWII. After the war it was properly explored by Ioannis and Anna Petrochilou (cave experts) and found to extend for 5km.
It is stunning!
We were glad that we’d taken long sleeve shirts with us as it was 34C outside but only 18C inside – a temperature which remains constant throughout the year.
Ioannina is the home of bougátsa and it’s absolutely delicious!! There is a little cafe called ‘Select’ whose decor hasn’t changed since the 70s. It only sells bougátsa which are made in the kitchen at the back of the shop by the owner whose picture is below. It’s served warm straight from the oven. There are two types savoury and sweet – no prizes for guessing which one we had.
The guide book calls it a kind of custard tart but this nowhere near describes it!
Ioannina’s Jewish community numbers just some 50 people today, but was once the centre of the unique 2,300 year-old Romaniote Jewish tradition.
The Romaniote Jews, neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic, emerged from the first Jewish communities of Europe. Records indicate the first Jewish presence in Greece dating back to 300 BCE.
These Jews became known as the Romaniotes, speaking their own language, Yevanic, or Judeo-Greek, a version of Greek infused with Hebrew and written with the Hebrew script.
By the start of the 20th century, some 4,000 Romaniote Jews lived in Ioannina. But amid the economic hardship and the turmoil that accompanied the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, many joined their Greek compatriots and emigrated.
Most went to the United States and Palestine, setting up Romaniote synagogues in New York City and Jerusalem. Later, a third was established in Tel Aviv. At the start of World War II, about 2,000 Jews remained in Ioannina.
On March 25, 1944, the German Nazi occupiers rounded up the Jews of Ioannina and sent them to Auschwitz.
Only 112 Ioannina Jews survived the death camps. Another 69 escaped the roundup, hiding with Christian families or fleeing into the mountains, where some fought with the Greek resistance.
The old Jewish area below the citadel is a warren of narrow lanes and alleys, arcades (called stoas) in Anexartisias Street, many now turned into buzzy restaurants and bars.
Metsovo
We arrived in Metsovo just as the rain started to fall so we repaired to a nearby restaurant for a delicious bean soup. Unfortunately by the time we finished our meal the heavens had opened completely. Undaunted, we continued uphill and found this wonderful museum. It was definitely worth getting wet for.
Metsovo is a beautiful town in the Pindos mountains and is often called ‘The Jewel of Epirus’. It is a Vlach town, a people who are historically nomadic shepherds who’ve lived in the region for generations and whose origins are from neighbouring Balkan countries.
With a population of shepherds it is only natural that Metsovo would have a culture of weaving. The textiles are utilitarian and are used as household furnishings, blankets, carpets, cushions, all heavily decorated in colorful designs that have spiritual and cultural significance. Other products of the village include the colorful embroidered traditional costumes, including the flokata, a black sleeveless coat or vest with a red band that identified the people from Metsovo during the Ottoman period.
We had our own individual tour round the old house in which the museum is situated. It was owned by a Swiss banker Tositsa who’s family came from the town. The guide told us that the winters were so harsh that the family had to spend seven months of the year inside the house and so had to store enough food to last them throughout the winter.
Here is a link to the Folklore Museum where you can see photographs www.metsovomuseum.gr
The monasteries of Meteora are an amazing sight. There are now six monasteries which are still inhabited. We visited two, the Great Meteora built in 1382 and the Varlaam built in 1517. We set off early in the morning and walked there up a stone path accompanied by a local dog who decided to act as our guide. Once the monastery opened at 9am we then had to ascend a further 300 steps to the main door. Until the road was built the monks reached the monastery by clambering into a net attached to a pulley and were winched up. This was powered by other monks manually turning the wheel (see pictures below).
The churches inside the monasteries were extremely beautiful, the walls and ceilings being completely covered in frescos.
Some of the rooms that could be visited included the old cellars and kitchens.
The monasteries had little museums and these photos come from them. The last is a poster from WWII when the Greeks were fighting off the Italian invasion.
The monasteries are a major tourist attraction and throughout the day coaches arrive with day trippers from all over the world.
There has been a Jewish community in Thessaloniki for over 2,000 years. But after the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella many more Sephardic Jews settled in Thessaloniki (Salonica) significantly increasing the Jewish population. Other Jews emigrated from elsewhere in southern Europe and by the 16 century over 50% of the city’s population were Jewish.
At the beginning of WWII the Jewish population of the city numbered 50,000 (just over one fifth of the population). In 1942 the Nazis destroyed the Jewish cemetery with more than 500,000 tombs. In the spring of 1943 the Jewish population were rounded up and on March 15th the first convoy of Jewish Greeks left Thessaloniki bound for Poland. In 1945 only 1,950 retuned. 96% were murdered in the concentration camps.
The plaque on the powerful statue reads:
“Dedicated by the Greek people to the memory of the 50,000 Jewish Greeks of Thessaloniki, deported from their mother city by the Nazi occupation forces in the spring of 1943 and exterminated in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz/ Birkenau death camps”
The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki was founded to honour the rich and creative Sephardic heritage as it evolved in the city after the 15th century. It is housed in one of the rare Jewish buildings that survived the fire of 1917. It is great that the city has this museum and the exhibitions provide detail of the Sephardic way of life which existed.
In every cafe we went into (and there were quite a few) we were given free pastries along with our coffee and tea. Each one was better than the last and the locations more and more beautiful. We thoroughly recommend chilling out sitting on a sofa at Cafe Imar (HMAP in Greek) on Aristotelous – fabulous.
I discovered a fantastic health food shop, and even better it was 5 minutes walk from our parking spot by the sea.
It’s called Greenhouse Bio, address Mitropolitou Gregorious Kallidou 108. They have a massive selection of vegan, gluten free, vegetables, bread etc. Definitely 5*.
Every street you walk down has sculptures and in beautiful locations – by the sea, in squares etc. The first below is the memorial to the Jewish Greeks, the three following relate to Alexandra the Great, the fifth had no plaque but is very powerful and the last ‘Umbrellas’ was placed in 1997 when the city was the European Capital of Culture. I found an App called ‘Strolling around Thessaloniki’ which details many of the sculptures and other sights in the city.
The Archeology museum had some very interesting collections. The photographs below come from ‘The Gold of Macedon’ tracing the use of gold through the ages, most of the artefacts coming from tombs.
This museum is housed in a beautiful old building known as Villa Modiano built in 1906 by the architect Eli Modiano for the banker Jacob Modiano and which survived the great fire of 1917. The collections consist of woven textiles, embroidery, tools etc, plus replicas of the equipment and wooden machinery used in mills to grind flour, pound wool (fulling) and even saw planks of wood.
We spent several delightful hours wandering around the market and bazaar area in the city, it was a vibrant area with whole areas dedicated to particular products as in India.
The official Camperstop in Thessaloníki proved completely unusable. It was full of trucks going in and out but also so steep the levellers kept sliding away!
But then we found this place on Park4night. Right by the sea, fantastic view, just a big space that the flats use for parking. And Valerie made friends with Makis who has his joinery workshop there plus a vegetable garden and arranged, in Greek, for us to stay here.