Corinth Canal

Corinth Canal....let me start off by saying i was not so excited to go back to Piaeus..why...cause i have seen Athens and it doenst excite me and also....i didnt really wanna stroll around Piraeus...so i looked at the shorex...dont ask me why cause i have seen the Acropolis...but somehow i just wanted to see...and then there it was...a shorex to the cornith canal and ancient corinth....hmmmm...now that looked interesting...and onl 5 1/2 hrs....why the hell not....it took us an hour to get there...on the way the guide was giving us some interesting facts....we saw some churches and the guide, Helen, explained that most of them are Byzantine design....cuppola at the top and decorated with bricks....however, some are neo classical designs...which means the walls are emphasized rather than then chiaroscuro and it maintains seperate identities of each of its parts...very interesting...and in fact 97% of people are Christian Orthodox and 3% are other.....yes...im gonna share some more facts with you....this way it also helps me remember the interesting parts.....or some facts...shows that although i see places..i am also still learning...so....greece has about 3000 islands but just under 200 are inhabited, Greece has a population of 11 million....an interesting fact was....5kg of olives make 1l of olive oil...and there are over 150 million olive trees in Greece...actually the cyprus tree and olive tree are a symbol of Greece....they are everywhere.... And they pick the olives during october going into november...anyway...enough facts for a little....

We drove around an hour and then we came to one of the five bridges which connects main land Greece to Peloponnese.....there are three old bridges...two for cars and one for railway and two new bridges...one for car and one for railway....

Corinth Canal from the bridge

Then it was time to board the little ferry ship which would take us onto the Corinth Canal...the canal is 6km 343m long...it is 8m deep and it is 24m wide...the maximum width of a ship going through it is 20m...and it was constructed between 1882 and 1893....amazing...all man-made...quite impressive....and the walls are so high....it was quite interesting to see....it connects the Aegean and the Aonean sea....and it saves a ship 324km by going throug the cornith canal as opposed to around.....

Corinth Canal
Corinth Canal
Aonean side

After the cruise it was time to visit the ancient city of Corinth...according to Greek mythology, Sisyphus, a grandfather of Bellerophon (the greek hero who rode Pegasus the winded horse) founded Cornith....the oldest preserved building is from the 6th centurey BC, the Apollo temple

Apollo Temple

Corinth in the middle of the 6th century allied with Soartan but later opposed the doartan King Cleomenes' political interventions in Athens. The romans then besieged Corinth during the second Macedonian war. In 44BC julius Caesar made Corinth a Roman colony, he rebuilt the city in Roman fashion...we also saw 2 fountains cause Cornith was rich in fountains as well as the public baths and toilets, some shops..not as well preserved as for example Pompeii...but still interesting to see.....

One of the fountains in ancient Corinth
Public toilets

After that is was a short visit to the small archelogical museum where we saw some mosaic as well as some statues.....most without heads...why you might ask yourself....well at least i did...and the reason.....(pretend im doing a drum roll)....because statues were done without heads so that people could buy them and then add their own head to it.....almost like a mass production of bodies and then you could personalise it with your own head.....

Roman Statues with no heads
Mosaic of the God of wine....the mosaic around is supposed to show you how you feel when you had too much wine

After that...time to go back to the ship...i thought it was an interesting shorex....not too long which was great...the time in ancient corinth was just perfect..sometimes they make the stay in this archelogical sites way too long..this was great....on the way out from ancient cornith we could also see the citadel aka the acropolis of ancient corinth (acropolis means top of the city).....the acrocorinth

Acrocorinth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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