Mount Olympus, Thessaly, Greece – 4 Day Trip

Leaving the monasteries behind we’re off for a four-day trip to Mount Olympus. The drive from Kalabaka to Litochoro is about 3 hours and a pretty easy drive. It did have some of the longest tunnels I’ve ever driven through which was kind of fun. Getting to our Airbnb we drove up the hill and through the city, in certain parts, the width of the street was about half a meter wider than the car we driving. This was a new experience for me and of course, the first thing the hosts says to us when we arrive “How was driving up the street, I hear a lot of complaints from Americans”.

Day 1 – Hiking in Mount Olympus 07.05.2021

Staying in Litochoro my brother and I wanted to do a small hike and find a waterfall with the remaining hours of the day. Looking on Google I found a waterfall which was a short walk from the parking lot near the top of Mount Olympus. The drive to the parking lot is about 30 minutes up the mountains, a very narrow and winding road. There are several good pullover spots to a lookout over Litochoro.

There is plenty of free parking up there and even a small place to get food and drinks. The waterfall I was searching for was Enipeas waterfall, which looked a lot better online than in person, but I did go in July so I’m sure it was due to it being the dry season.

We decided to hike a bit up Mount Olympus but then as people were coming down they told us it was about 5 hours round trip, so we decided to head back and went to St Dionysius Orthodox Church.

There is a trail behind the church that leads you down to the river and a nice hike to the Holy Cave of Agios Dionysios. This hike took a lot longer than I expected and there are a LOT of stairs to go down to get to the cave once you get close.

On the way back we stopped at as many waterfalls as we could and tried to get a photo of the big waterfall, but trees were mostly in the way. It looked a lot better in person than on camera haha. If I were to go again I would set aside more time to hike the other side of the river which had some swimming holes and better views of the waterfalls.

Day 2 – Drive to Thessaloniki 07.06.2021

When booking the trip to Mount Olympus, I added an extra day to be sure that we could go canyoning. Since that activity is weather permitted, and I’ve been burned in the past I wanted to make sure. Seeing that we would be good to go canyoning tomorrow, we decided to use our burner day to go to Thessaloniki. I will write a separate post for this city and release it on Tuesday, January 11^th.

Day 3 – Canyoning 07.07.2021

My favorite activity to do when traveling abroad. I booked my tour with Trekking Hellas Mt. Olympus. I’ll be honest I was a bit skeptical when booking with them. Their website didn’t seem that trustworthy, I couldn’t find anything online to back them up, minus a few reviews. And they wanted me to pay half the deposit by making a bank transfer. Lucky for me, my friend Matt is from Greece and had a Greek bank account, so I was able to give him USD and save myself all the bank fees. And everything worked out perfectly with this company, I highly recommend it.

Lucky for me and my brother, because of COVID it was just us and the two guides. So we got a private tour for the cost of EUR 125 each. This was in Orlias Canyon in Mount Olympus. It starts with a steep hike up to the top and then once we got in we swim, start hiking and then jump off a 5-meter cliff. The pictures and videos do it more justice than me typing about it, so check it out below.

To end the night we went to a bar that is owned by one of our canyoning guides. It was called Cavo Dimo. I didn’t take any photos, it is right on the ocean and if you get a good seat you look right over the beach and into the sea. Great places for drinks and snacks, check it out.

Day 4 – Archaeological Site of Dion 07.08.2021

Before going to Mount Olympus I had no idea there was a large archeological site near Litochoro. We had initially planned to go hiking today, but we were a bit gassed with the canyoning. So we headed to the Archaeological Site of Dion. This is a short drive of about thirty minutes. The cost to enter is EUR 8. I don’t think this site is well known because when we arrived there were maybe 5 cars in the parking lot and I saw maybe 6 tourists there. It was really neat to have the place basically to ourselves.

Back to Athens, where our trip was supposed to end but now it’s being extended an extra week. Hopefully, we can get back to the Parthenon and see everything this time, fingers crossed.

Thanks for reading and liking my posts, don’t forget to follow my Youtube and my Blog.

Cheers!