Day 25 Athens.
This morning we arrived in, Piraeus, the Port of Athens. This is a really bustling place with ferries ranging from giant Spirt of Tasmania size to smaller catamarans and hydrofoils coming and going at a remarkable clip.
On the dreaded buses at 8:00am, we headed off to see the amazing Corinth Canal that connects the Gulf of Corinth in the Ionian Sea with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea.
First contemplated in ancient times by the City state of Corinth, their attempt to dig this canal failed due to continued collapses. Instead in 600BC they built an overland route, an early ship railway, where ships were hauled across the narrow Isthmus in wheeled cradles that ran in grooves.
In Roman times Julius Cesar conducted a preliminary design and site investigation works for a canal but it was under the reign of Nero that the second serious failed attempt was taken with thousands of slaves assigned to the task. This, however, ceased after two years on Nero’s death.
The Venetians tried again in the 1680s trying to continue on from what Nero had achieved but finally gave up.
The last and finally successful attempt was carried out in 1893. The canal cuts through the narrow Isthmus of Corinth and “separates” the Peloponnese peninsula from the rest of the Greek mainland
The Corinth Canal never lived up to expectations. It’s very narrow, making navigation difficult, and the anticipated traffic never materialized. There’s also the danger of sedimentary rock sliding off the canal walls and you can see where this has continued to happen as you sail through it. Still it is an amazing place to visit.
Our next stop was the Archaeological Museum at the Ruins of the Roman city of Corinth. If you remember how the old father in the movie ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ used to go on about how the Greeks invented everything. I can speak from experience of several Greek guides that this appears to be a common Greek trait. Unfortunately our guide today had it in spades.
This museum has a reputation of having a fine collection of ancient sculpture but rather than see them we got corralled in a small airless side room where we got a long lecture on the history of the Greek gods, which I should say we have been told twice before, then how you could remember the history of Athens by the fingers on one hand, then we went thru an endless etymology showing all the English words that had come from the Greek.
By the time she had run out of breath we only had time to bolt out of the museum,do a quick half circuit around a very extensive set of ruins of a Roman city, before we had to get back on the bus.
We, however, managed to see the spot, pictured above, where St Paul is said to have preached to the Corinthians, which was pretty special.
We had a late lunch in a beautiful beach front hotel, then hopped on the bus again for a long slow trip back thru peak hour traffic to the ship. It had been a very long day and we were both wrecked.
Hardys’ Travels 