Patras is Greece's third-largest city, located at the very top of the Peloponnese peninsula. We had planned to stay overnight here, since we were weary from the long ferry trip and from not sleeping much the previous night on the floor in the boat. In a frustratingly annoying coincidence, we had arrived in Patras on exactly the same weekend that a major car rally was being held, and there was no affordable accommodation to be had for love or money. We had little choice but to sit and wait at the train station until 2am, when we caught a train to Pyrgos, arriving there at 4am. After loitering around this station in the cold and dark for several more hours, we emerged at daybreak and stumbled into the bus station, boarded a bus and made the 30 minute trip to the small town of Olympia.

Olympia is a quaint, sleepy little town, very close to the ruins of Ancient Olympia, a sacred place of temples, priests' dwellings and public buildings, also the venue for the ancient version of Olympic Games. The modern town, although pleasant, has little to offer except a main street lined with restaurants and tourist shops stocked full of overpriced souvenirs and Athens 2004 Olympic memorabilia. After finding a cheap but dodgy guesthouse, we slept most of the morning and visited Ancient Olympia in the afternoon. There are very few ancient buildings actually standing anymore, and its a little difficult to imagine how all the piles of rocks once formed such important and impressive structures that are shown in an artists' reconstruction near the entrance of the site. Despite these drawbacks, you can still appreciate the history and gain a new perspective of the modern-day Olympics, especially when you stand on the running track in the centre of the ancient stadium (now a grassy hill).

We left Olympia early Sunday morning, taking a scenic three-hour bus trip across the Peloponnese to Tripoli, then a connecting bus to Corinth (which was actually en-route to Athens, as almost all Greek buses are destined for Athens). What they didn't tell us was that the bus didn't actually stop in Corinth to drop off passengers, but by the side of the road very close to the Corinth canal, about twenty minutes out of the town. Stranded there for over 2 hours, we waited for a local bus to take us back into Corinth town.

Modern Corinth is a rather uninteresting city, fairly typical of most Greek towns, however the main reason for our brief stop there was to visit the ruins of Ancient Corinth, 7km away from the modern town. The next morning we decided to catch a bus to the ancient site, but managed to board the wrong bus that took us in the opposite direction. A twenty-minute walk back to the bus station and forty-minute wait for the next bus (which only left every hour) saw us heading in the right direction. The site of Ancient Corinth was fairly typical of most Greek ruins, piles of rocks scattered on the ground, requiring a keen interest in history and a good imagination to appreciate what the site would have been like at it's peak of civilization. Since I have neither of these qualities, it was a fairly disappointing morning since there was little else to see there. Our time running out, we make a hasty retreat from the ancient site to the modern city. Probably the biggest hassle travelling through Greece is the Greek alphabet, which can be really difficult to decipher, especially when you are trying to read the destination on the front of a speeding bus. It was agreed that due to all the problems we had experienced travelling on the buses in Greece, that we would take the train to Athens, and by mid-afternoon, we were happily chugging along our way towards the capital city.

Arriving in Athens train terminal at around 4pm Monday afternoon, we took the shiny, brand-spanking new Metro into Syntagma, the heart of modern Athens, flanked by luxury hotels, banks and expensive coffee shops. From there we walked down into Plaka, a delightfully old and beautiful suburb nestled on the north-eastern slope of the Acropolis, where we had planned to stay. Much to our dismay, we had some difficulty finding accommodation, and it was frightfully more expensive than was suggested in our trusty travel book. Adding insult to injury, a large thunderstorm rolled through the city bringing with it torrents of rain. After two hours of trudging the streets, we managed to find a reasonable hotel with an excellent location and view of the Acropolis, and took the last room available. The centre of Athens, where we stayed, is extremely tourist-oriented, with many overpriced souvenir shops lining the pretty, narrow cobblestone streets.

We stayed in Athens for two days (arrived late Monday afternoon and left early Thursday morning), and managed to visit almost everything of interest in just one day. On Tuesday morning we visited the Acropolis, the quite spectacular rocky outcrop in the centre of Athens that symbolises the glory and achievements of ancient Greece. Probably the best preserved archaic structure, the exterior pillars of the Pantheon stands largely intact hight atop the Acropolis, an icon of an ancient civilisation that has survived through the centuries. Also located next to the Pantheon is the Temple of Athena Nike, which has been reconstructed. The top of the Acropolis provides a remarkable panoramic view of the Athens, a huge, modern, polluted city. The scale of the urban sprawl in this city is truly incredible, with the entire Attic basin packed to the brim with low white buildings as far as the eye can see (pollution permitting), with very little greenery.

Making our decent from the Acropolis, we briefly visited the Ancient and Roman Agora, more ruins from the ancient civilisation, as well as the remains of the Temple of Olympian Zeus. By the end of our time in Athens, we were thoroughly sick of seeing piles of old rocks and marble stones that make up most of the ancient archaeological sites in Greece, it is hard to appreciate and imagine what it would have been like in ancient times when all you see is rubble, and there is very little information explaining each site and what used to be there. Despite this, it was quite an eye-opening experience.

The next morning, my brother persuaded me to climb Lykavittos Hill with him, the highest of the eight hills dotted around Athens. Towering high above the Acropolis, pine-covered Lykavittos offers all-embracing views of the city, truly an awesome and breathtaking spectacle. In the afternoon we ventured back to the suburbs of Syntagma and Omonia with busy, overcrowded, shop-lined streets that you might find in any other modern city in the world. While there are still two years before the city hosts the Olympic Games in 2004, at the current rate of development progress, it seems as though Athens might still struggle to cope with such an event of that magnitude.

Departing Athens on Thursday morning, we boarded the 10am train to Thessaloniki. These trains travel at very high speeds and take some time to slow down, which can be disastrous for anything that happens to get in its way. About two hours into the trip, travelling through a rural farming district, the train slammed into a herd of sheep that were crossing the tracks. Since I was sitting in a window seat in the front carriage, I managed to catch a glimpse of the sheep on either side of the tracks, as well as bits of wool, flesh and gore of the unfortunate animal that was unable to get out of the way. This unusual event held up the train for a good thirty minutes, presumably in order to clean the remains from the front of the train. The train finally arrived in Thessaloniki just after 4pm.

Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, looked to be a very pleasant, clean yet busy place. We had planned to stay in this city overnight, however we discovered that the only bus to Albania left late at night, and we couldn't afford still stay another full day. The only option we had was to check our bags into the left luggage office at the train station and walk around the city and along the harbour for several hours. I enjoyed the little time we spent in Thessaloniki, and would like to return again another time to have a better look.

After waiting for a good two hours at the bus terminal, we left Thessaloniki at 11pm Thursday night, and drove through the night towards the Greek-Albanian border, high in the mountainous interior. It was extremely cold when we arrived at the border at 2am, and we were ill-prepared for these weather conditions as most of the time the weather had been quite hot. Everybody was forced to get off the bus and queue up in the freezing cold at the single immigration booth that was open to get our documents checked, then walk across to the Albanian border control office and get our passports stamped as well. It took about an hour to get through the Greek control (because they dislike Albanians and check their documentation very thoroughly), but only about 10 minutes though the Albanian one. Continuing on, the bus arrived in the Albanian city of Korca, just inside the Albanian border, at 4am Friday morning. There we had to wait, drinking warm tea in a small cafe in Korca, until about 6am before we could catch a minivan back to Tirana, where our two week journey around the countries of Italy and Greece came to an end.

I personally enjoyed travelling around Italy a little more than Greece. While the attractions and sights of Italy are perhaps a little younger, bigger, and less ruined than those of Greece, the differences in prices between the two countries is definitely noticeable. While eating out in restaurants in Italy was a rarity for us, as even the pizza and spaghetti was expensive, Greece was quite a bit more affordable, and we were able to try some of traditional Greek cuisine such as moussaka, souvlaki, gyros, and stuffed tomatoes and peppers. Despite this, each country has it's share of natural and man-made wonders, each uniquely enchanting and beautiful, unlike anywhere else in the world. Coming from a country with little over two hundred years of recorded history, it is amazing to see such enduring man-made structures as the Colosseum in Rome and the Pantheon in Athens, both of which stand as relics of ancient civilizations that have long since disappeared. They have endured through many battles and wars and seen the rise and fall of many kingdoms and republics, yet have remained as constant reminders of the wealth, prosperity, and culture that existed in the Roman and Greek empires many centuries ago.