GREECE
(Europe)
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula. It is bordered by Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and by Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east and south of mainland Greece, while the Ionian Sea lies to the west. Both parts of the eastern Mediterranean basin feature a vast number of islands
Greece consists of a mountainous and craggy mainland jutting out into the sea at the southern end of the Balkans. The Peloponnesus peninsula (separated from the mainland by the canal of the Isthmus of Corinth); and numerous islands (around 2,000), including Crete, Euboea, Lesbos, Chios, the Dodecanese and the Cycladic groups of the Aegean Sea as well as the Ionian Sea islands. Greece has the tenth longest coastline in the world with 14,880 km; its land boundary is 1,160 km (721 mi).
Four-fifths of Greece consist of mountains or hills, making the country one of the most mountainous in Europe. Western Greece contains a number of lakes and wetlands and it is dominated by the Pindus mountain range. Pindus has a maximum elevation of 2,636 metres (8,648 ft) and it is essentially a prolongation of the Dinaric Alps.
