June 28th - Day 18

Corinth Canal

Our trip to the Peloponnese started with an early departure at 7:30 am. While I am having a fantastic time, I must admit that I am starting to miss the ability to sleep in that normally accompanies summer vacation. I’m just grateful that I will still have a few weeks of sleeping in before heading back to school in August.

Temple of Apollo

We stopped at the Corinth Canal as we passed over it. It is quite an impressive site and I don’t think the pictures I took really show how deep the canal really is. It was a little terrifying looking over the edge of the bridge…Our group was shown around the site of Corinth by Guy Sanders. I was a little disappointed by his presentation as he mostly focused on the geography and its significance to the site, rather than the site itself. As a result I have a bunch of pictures of the site, but I don’t really know what any of it is. We also walked through the site fairly quickly, so there were many things that were bypassed. We stopped at the archaeological museum on site to look at the finds from the area before heading to Acrocorinth.

Acrocorinth

Acrocorinth is located on a steep rock to the southwest of ancient Corinth. It is a fortified citadel of ancient and medieval Corinth and was the most important fortification in the area from antiquity until the Greek War of Independence in 1821. It is 575 m high and its walls are a total of almost 2,000 m in length. Because of its location, it required a “forced death march” to the top. The biggest problem with Acrocorinth was not the steep incline, but that fact that the stones that made up the walkways have been rubbed glass smooth from the thousands of people who visit the site each year. Needless to say it was like walking on a very steep incline covered in ice…I’m lucky I didn’t fall and break my face (or anything else for that matter)! We didn’t make it all the way to the top to see the Temple of Aphrodite because the site closed at 3 pm, but we did make it high enough to make it through all 3 gates and see the underground cisterns, which were really cool. The trip back down was just as treacherous as the journey up and again we all had to be careful not to fall on the stones.

Demeter Sanctuary Theatre

Our last stop of the day was at the remains of the Demeter Sanctuary, which unfortunately is largely overgrown so we couldn’t see much. We did get to see the remains of the theater and a tile mosaic floor, but that was about it. We then piled back on the bus and headed to New Corinth where we will spend the night. Tomorrow we move on to Nauplion for 3 days.