We seem to have arrived in the port of Piraeus in Greece at
around 4 a.m. this morning, so we were awake and taking in the surroundings,
but unfortunately unable to capture sailing in on a photo. We did go back to sleep, but only until the 6
a.m. wake up call, the 6:30 a.m. breakfast ready to leave at 7:45 for our next
adventure.
Once again we had a fascinating tour guide, Maria, a lovely Greek
woman with incredible knowledge of European history, and Greek Mythology, and
understanding of all the architectural differences through the ages, and excellent English. It brought a lot of my Pate’s education back
– Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns, and how size is an indicator of
age. Corinth is just over an hour away
from Piraeus and the first thing we did was comfort stop at a service
station/souvenir shop for a Greek coffee, an old familiar taste we both
love. Then we made our way to the boat
for a beautiful trip along the Corinth Canal and back, under most of the
bridges, but very interestingly over one bridge (that is lowered under water to
let ships cross). We later saw this very
wet bridge after it was raised up to do its job supporting cars crossing the
canal.
After the canal came Ancient Corinth. We started in an open air museum and learned
about the dismembered statues, the inscriptions in stone dating back 2000 or
more years, the evidence of the work of St Paul and the differences between Roman
and Greek. We could see the fortress on
the top of the Corinth mountain, and below are the remains of the Temple,
several Doric pillars raised up on a platform, overlooking the Agora, shops, remnants
of roofs, sandstone columns, marble paving and pillars and a theatre. We walked
slowly around the museum, shops and relics for about 90 minutes. I have posted
some photos on Facebook thanks to the lunch stop’s wi-fi and they look
wonderful.
We were driven to the Kalamaki Beach hotel for this Greek
buffet – hot Mediterranean style veggies, meat, fish, salads, feta, pitta, baklava
with fruit and yogurt. One has to eat well the day before attempting to walk a
half marathon, though. Lunch was
enormous, so I’m not sure I’d even need that much if I was running it! Ho Hum!
