Corinth

We had a busy day, driving from Delphi first thing in the morning, heading to Corinth Canal and Ancient Corinth for the archaeological site. The Corinth Canal started its construction project in 1881 and completed in 1893. Much of the funding was supported by the Hungarian government. The canal is 6.3 km length, 24.6 m width, 79 meter deep and 8 m underwater depth. 

The Ancient Corinth archaeological site is dominated by the Archaic temple of Apollo, a Doric peripteral temple with monolithic columns (6x15). It was also the place where apostle Paul spoke to the Corinthians in AD 52. 

Afterward we drove to the birthing place of marathon. The story was told that a soldier had to run to Athens to report about the victory of an import battle with Persia. He ran no-stop 26 miles to Athens and proclaimed the message "Niki = we won" and then clasped with exhaustion and died. In remembrance of this soldier, marathon was held every year and that was how the marathon started. There are mileage signs along the road marking the km to Althens. 

The next stop was another archaeological site of Sounion and the temple of Poseidon - God of the sea. The site is situated on the rocky peninsula that projects into the sea at the south-east tip of Attica. This is one of the more well preserved site we have seen so far. Very impressive. 

Our flight to Crete island was scheduled at 10:20 pm and we had quite a bit of time to return the rental car. This is when everything could go wrong, started to go wrong for us. 

The signage for rental return was very small and it took us a few tried before finding the entrance. We arrived at the place where all rental cars return but as hard as we looked, we could not find our rental company "Avance". The agents behind the counter were rude and not helpful at all. We had to call the rental company and was told that they do not have counter space. The car was supposed to be picked up at the arrival gate. No one told us the info and because we were early, no one was there to greet us. After a few calls, we finally were able to return the car. 

As we approach the Ryanair area at 8:10 pm, we looked for those self-served kiosks but found non and asked the agent at the counter to check us in. We heard (all four of us) her told us that it would cost $5 euro each to check in by her or we could use the computer provided by the airport to do so. Being self sufficient, we opted to use the computer. Unfortunately, the system was EXTREMELY slow and given that we only had 10 minutes to final check in (two hours before flight scheduled, ours was at 10:20 pm) before the check in closed for the flight, we went back to the counter and it was then she told us that it would cost $55 euro EACH for her to check us in. We were totally shocked. She said we should have checked in earlier on line. As it turned out, because all the communication from the airline was in Greek and when Richard looked at it initially, the message had to do with car rental or booking of hotel and as a result, he thought the email messages were advertisements and had ignored the subsequent ones. It was most unfortunate that each of the messages was in Greek only and therefore, we did not know the high costs of not checking on line. We had no choice and had to paid for the additional charges ( we also had to pay for the luggage charge of $30 euro each, this we knew but not the on-line check in charges). So the budget air that we had chosen turned out to be more expensive than what we had anticipated. All due to miscommunication.  We were also misdirected by our previous experience (first day arriving in Greece to Thessaloniki) with Ryanair in which we did not have to check in early but an agent did it for us free due to business class. Oh, well. Part of the experiences of traveling to foreign countries with different rules and policies. 

So we finally passed the security check and arrived at the gate. There was a huge crowd already lined up and there was very little space for us to squeez into the small waiting area. By then, we were emotionally and physically tired and just wanted to have a bit of space to relax, rather than fight and pushing with the crowd, We opted to anothe waiting area but kept an eye to the gate. After finding a spot to sit down and our adrenaline had subsided, our fatigue kicked in. We dozed off a bit and before we knew, it was 10:00 pm and the gate is supposed to close at 9:50 pm. We jumped and dashed to the gate. Luckily, the line had thinned out but there were still people waiting to check in. We did make it after all!  Wouldn't it be totally disastrous if we slept in and missed our flight, after all the drama and the high costs to check-in by a real person rather on-line?  What a day and what memories we had created. Never a dull moments travelling with the Wus. 

We still have to pick up a rental car after arriving and hope that this is a smooth ride to our hotel tonight. At close to midnight, I don't think we have more energy to deal with more dramas today. 

Stay tuned ... The journey continues ...