Greece- Part 2

Continued from Part One...

Day Six:
Our ferry arrived in Athens pretty early in the morning.  We took a cab from the port to pick up our rental car and then headed out of the city.  Our first stop was the Corinth Canal.  It was a pretty quick stop but it was a neat thing to see.  We walked onto the bridge over the canal and looked straight down- it's so tall and pretty narrow and completely empty; I'm not sure how much the waterway is actually used these days.

We continued on our way to ancient Corinth.  It was a beautiful day and it was really neat to see one of the most prominent ancient Greek city-states.  It was pretty large and it was our first glimpse of intact columns at the Temple of Apollo.  There were several tour groups around the site, reading together from their Bibles.  We saw the place where Paul was tried for unlawful preaching.  There was even a small museum on the site.

After Corinth we headed on to Mycenae.  This place was huge! There was a neat gate as we entered  and then it was a bit of a winding path through the old city.  It was a lot of walking but we got some great views from the top of the hill.

Day Seven:
First  stop: Sparta! On our way to the archeological site, we stopped by the stadium to see the Leonidas statue.

We only saw one other family/group while we were at the ancient city.  There wasn't as much left at this site as some others but it was pretty cool to sit on the steps of the theatre and see a bunch of artifacts organized all over the grass.

We spent most of the rest of the day at Olympia, the site of the original Olympic games!  This was actually one of my favorite sites of the trip.  It was really beautiful, and they also had a lot of information about the uses of all the buildings.  Unfortunately Zeus' temple was pretty much destroyed but there is a museum that had a lot of the sculptures on display.

Day Eight:
I'm glad we dedicated basically a whole day to exploring Delphi because that city was a hike!  The stadium was at the very top and there was a lot to see along the way. In addition to being the home of the Oracle, Delphi was also a training ground for athletes (you'd be fit just living there because of how steep it is!) so they had a gymnasium at the bottom of the hill too.

We arrived in Athens that evening, so after dinner we got our first glimpses of some of the monuments/ruins and explored the shops in the neighborhood where we were staying.

Day Nine:
This was our big Athens day.  We started the day at the Acropolis.  It was a bit surreal to be in such an iconic place.

We had bought a pass that gave us access to a whole bunch of sites around the city instead of buying tickets for the acropolis alone, so we spent the rest of the day seeing as many of the other sites as we could.  We saw the agora, the Temple of Hephestus, Temple of Olympian Zeus, and a few others.  The Temple of Olympian Zeus was especially photogenic.

Of course we also stopped for meals and snacks along the way.

And we watched the changing of the guard.

We crammed a lot into this trip, and while we did experience some ruins burnout by the end, we were so happy with this trip and we had a blast.  The kids were great travelers and I think they had a great time too.  It was a trip to remember, for sure!