Ancient Corinth

November 2, 2008
Athens, Greece

The ship docked in Pyraeus, Greece on Sunday and I elected to do a tour to the city of Ancient Corinth and to the Corinth Canal. Unlike many of the tours I have been doing, this one was only a half-day tour and I did not have to be up at the crack of dawn, so I was a bit excited to get an extra hour or so of sleep.

The tour left the dock at around 8:30am and we headed to the canal, which was about 45 or so minutes outside of Athens. It was fun to walk across the 25-meter bridge over the canal and look down. Not only was the view from above quite different from anything I’d seen thus far.

We got back on the bus after about 20 minutes at the canal and headed for the ancient city of Corinth. Our guide told us that the ancient city housed roughly 300,000 citizens and over 450,000 slaves, so needless to say it was quite an affluent place to live. It was famous for its pottery and we were able to see examples of these vases in the small museum housed at the archaeological sight. Unfortunately, a great deal of the ruins of the city have not been uncovered, so all there was really to see was part of the ancient agora, and we could see the acropolis of the city from below, but this was located high atop a nearby mountain. Apparently, it was normal for residents of the ancient city to walk from the agora to the acropolis on a regular basis, and that amazed me.

Despite being all “ruined out”, as I have been feeling of late, I enjoyed my trip to the ruins of Corinth. I am beginning to realize that my enjoyment of a tour hinges heavily along the quality of the guide, and I had a phenomenal one here at Corinth. Additionally, Corinth did not seem like so much of a pile of rocks as other sights I have been to appeared to be. The museum was also interesting with all of the different examples of pottery from 2,500 years ago. We had some free time after he explained everything to us and I found my way to a small nearby restaurant where I grabbed a gyro and headed back to the bus. All in all, it was not a bad way to spend a morning in Greece.