Sunday – Athens and the Corinth Canal
This morning, we passed through the ancient, and rather awesome, Corinth Canal. At roughly 3 miles in length, it provides a convenient shortcut from the Ionian Sea back into the Aegean Sea, and to Athens, our starting point.
I plan to google the Corinth Canal when I get home, to learn more about it. It’s an absolute marvel of engineering, raising all sorts of questions; who, when and how did they build it?; how long did it take, and how many men undertook the task? Not to mention; How much did it cost?
As far as I do know, it was started by the Romans who failed to complete it; slaves would carry the ships over the middle, highest section – now that would have been quite a sight to see…
In terms of size, the Minerva must be at the maximum end of vessel-width when it comes to what can actually pass through the canal. It’s sides are tall and steep, and at its narrowest points, there were barely a couple of metres to spare. Quite a spectacular experience!
The depth of the canal fluctuates; today, the water was quite low, the captain explained, which meant that instead of the permitted, more common, 8 knots maximum speed, we were reduced to only one knot (occasionally half a knot’s crawl); the whole transit took almost 3 hours from start to finish.
As a consequence of our slow canal transit, we were late arriving in Piraeus. You’d think that the immigration officials would have been standing on the quayside waiting for us, but sadly that was not meant to be; a further delay (waiting for the ship to be cleared) meant that our final tour of the cruise was late in leaving.
The tour was a 90-minute coach ride to visit a temple, where we would stay for about an hour before returning back to the ship. That would be another 90-minute drive, then, totalling 4 hours – 3 hours sitting on a coach.
I have to say that when we finally arrived, it was well worth it. Another delay occurred as guides went off to organise the tickets for everyone on the five coaches (that’s a lot of people), but finally, we ascended the steps to view the Temple of Athena at close quarters.
All the delays meant that we were there as the sun was setting over the Aegean Sea, making the light rather perfect.
The journey back to the ship took a little longer than ninety minutes; we encountered heavy traffic as we approached Piraeus, meaning that we didn’t get back on board until 7:15pm.
It had been a long day, but very interesting; the Corinth Canal and the Temple of Athena providing a fitting end to what has been a very enjoyable two-week trip around the Landscapes of the Mediterranean.
