Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Ancient Corinth to Santorini




From Ancient Corinth Acropolis


We started the day with an early morning trip up to Ancient Corinth. Ancient Corinth was one of the largest and most important cities of Greece, with a population of 90,000 in 400 BC. The Romans totally destroyed Corinth in 146 BC, built a new city in its place in 44 BC, and later made it the provincial capital of Greece. Now, it exists as quiet ruins on an acropolis overlooking the modern city of Corinth, just a couple hours from Athens by car. If you miss the tour buses, this place is a ghost town. In fact, we've talked a lot on this trip about how the sites have been as amazing (or more) than a lot of the sites we visited in France, but you are walking through them with about 1/50th of the number of fellow visitors (except Athens, of course) and with 1/10th of the services. It's been a treat, but I also feel a bit sad for the Greeks. Tourism has really been affected this year as people have been scared off by the thought of refugees making traveling difficult. In fact, we've not seen any sign of refugees (just a bit disturbing- refugee camps must be away from tourist centers) and we've had numerous interactions with Greeks that can be boiled down to this sort of reaction, "Do you like my country? Thank you for coming to Greece. We are happy to show our country to you."







Catching the Athens-Thira plane



Straight to the lighthouse for evening photos!  (after a swim, of course)





View from our balcony in Akrotiri


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