Piraeus is a port city in the region of Attica, Greece. Piraeus is located within the Athens urban area, 12 kilometres (7 miles) southwest from its city center (municipality of Athens), and lies along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Athens is well known for the Acropolis, but we decide to take an excursion to the Corinth Canal. “This 19th-century engineering marvel cuts through sheer rock, dividing the narrow causeway that links the Peloponnesus with the Greek mainland. Carved into a massive rock, the 76-foot wide and 26-foot deep canal dramatically separates the Peloponnese from the rest of mainland Greece. Before the Corinth Canal was constructed, ships had to sail all the way around the Peloponnese, adding 185 nautical miles and several extra days to the journey.” Our journey to the canal was 90 minutes and fortunately, it was a Saturday morning drive with not the usual heavy peak hour traffic of a normal Athens week.
Our highway took us along the rocky coves of the Saronic Gulf to Isthmia where we boarded a motor launch for our journey along history. Interestingly, at each end of the canal is a roadway that crosses the canal but when ships or boats pass the bridge, the bridge actually submerges for the watercraft to pass over. Along the canal, four or five other bridges cross 26-foot above. We could have had a rather boring local tour guide but we were blessed to have someone who ‘should have been my history teacher’. She made history worth having by using stories of the day to explain why the landscape of today is like it is. Her knowledge of greek methology mixed with history helped make what could have been a laborious excursion, one which has been a highlight to us. When you saw her trying to hold all the tips she received from other guests, you knew others appreciated her guiding, experience and information too.
After returning to the ship for lunch, Lyn and I needed faster WiFi than was available in the shipping terminal so took a walk off the port to enjoy some ice-cream at a café looking over the busy port, to meet our internet needs; sorry to everyone that I was four days behind in our posts. They all came through in a short period of time.
Athens was the end of the cruise for over 2600 passengers and so there were over 2600 new passengers to be processed ready for boarding. Lyn and I watched the last few get on board from our Deck 15 suite. Would you believe just as they were about to bring the gangway onto the ship, a taxi raced towards the ship from the entrance gate 500 metres away with two passengers needing to be processed right at the gangway. The ship’s staff must be very patient people, not like myself when the clock is involved, or silly people trying to ‘break’ my rules, hahahaha!
Tomorrow we visit the beautiful island of Santorini; the favourite of many visitors in the past.
If a person has anything in them, travel will bring it out.
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