Day 30 - Sunday 2 June - Corinth

Sunday 2 June

Nikos, the taxi driver we meet at the station yesterday evening,  turned up at 9:30 as promised.  He whisked us off to Isthmia, to the bridges over the canal, and waited while we walked across and back and took photos of boats processing underneath.

 

 He had made phone calls, and had booked us onto a small cruise boat that was leaving at about 10:30.  So he zoomed off, and we waited, then we went too.

 
It takes about 25 mins to motor through the canal, and you have to line up and go when the canal master tells you to.  At either end there is a low level bridge that sinks to allow boats to sail over it - quite a different approach to most bridges that lift up. 

 

 So we watched the group of Asian girls taking selfies all the way, while we took pictures of caves, rock strata, bridges, a bungy man, gum trees, other boats, and goats.

 

 

Nikos was waiting, and off we went to Acrocorinth, a great lump of rock 575m high that towers above the site of ancient Corinth.  There has been fortifications there since ancient history, but those there now are from around C12.

There are 3 levels of gates to get through (which took 10 mins to walk) and inside is just wild scrub with pathways, and very little in the way of maps and no direction arrows.  We wanted to get to a high point to look over the isthmus, but there was no way we could do that in only 1 hour, that part being furthest away. So we looked over ancient Corinth and the Gulf, then David decided to have a go to the next crest, so I walked back past some old buildings, and we got back to Nikos by our appointed time.

 At the second gate

 To the peak

 Lots of pretty flowers

Inside St Demitrios' Church, with some very old faded paintings.

At the bottom of the hill we joined the tourists in Ancient Corinth, which is pretty much the same as any of these ruined cities - lots of marble pieces laid out, some discernible buildings and explanation boards written in several languages, but most using archaeological and historical terms that most wouldn't understand.

 

 The last stop in our St Paul trifecta

We ate our sandwiches as we walked, and were back to Nikos in 45mins to ask about the theatre, which appeared on the maps to be a bit further away.  He said it was not there, and started out from his parking spot, so we had little choice but to jump in.

The Peirene Spring, with water still flowing from the site on Acrocorinth where Pegasus pawed the ground and the water poured forth.

So we went back to the modern world, picked up our bags and were at the station with over an hour  to spare (which could have been used on the fortress).  We retraced our train and bus route from yesterday,

 

 The Odontotos track through Diakofto village

and kept going to Patras, where we found our tiny apartment.  We went for a walk to check on our hire car for tomorrow, and stopped in at a nearby luscious cake shop.