The Voyage of the Mighty Tenho: Corinth Canal and Athens

Feels like fall has arrived…another good system of rain passing through and a 10 degree drop in temperature. Luckily, it held off until we’d passed through the Corinth Canal and had a day exploring the ruins of Athens.

Before going through the Corinth Canal, we spent a night in the bay of Saranda, surrounded by high mountains devoid of any lights, with just a tiny village at the end of a long dark inlet. Gave us a real sense of what it was like thousands of years ago. Going through the Corinth Canal was awe-inspiring, as we tried to envision life before the canal, when various empires ROLLED their ships across the land on rollers to battle each other on either side. The canal wasn’t completed until 1893, although not for lack of trying. For example, in 67 AD, the Roman Emperor Nero tried to start digging but then had to stop and go fight the Gauls instead. Speaking of Gauls, the kids have discovered the European comic books and movies of Asterix and Obelix, Gauls who fight the Romans. Can’t understand why these haven’t made it big in America…they’re hysterical! (And historical!)

As we approached Athens, we had a wonderful sail in, dwarfed by the monstrous cargo ships all waiting to go into Piraeus, the biggest port in the Med. What a thrill to sail to the port where in 480 BC, the Athenian general Themistocles had the Athenian fleet as he went into the Battle of Salamis against Xerces and the Persian fleet. What an amazing battle story - it even included a Persian heroine Artemsia, Queen of Halicarnassus and captain of five ships. It’s been a relief to find some good female role models for Maggie on this trip. Even at five years old, she wanted to know why the tooth fairy only gave her coins with boys on them. Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony don’t get you very far with all those baby teeth! Speaking of teeth, Hugo’s already lost five teeth on this trip and at this rate will be living off hummus and lentil soup in Turkey. He wins the family prize for "number of teeth lost on different continents," (North America, Europe and Africa).

Two days in Athens is almost tragically short given all the things to see, however, I did't want to burn out the kids (or my husband) on museums and ruins, so we focused on a few highlights to reinforce some of the things they’ve been studying. The kids love making things out of the clay we sometimes find on beaches, so they particularly liked all the clay pots in the museums. I see many buckets of goopy clay being hauled back to the boat in the future...

Next stop, the nearby island of Aegina where we go on our quest for the world’s best pistachio.