Athens to Sarande

We arrived to Athens to Sunny skies and 30 degree heat which was awesome! Not so awesome was the overnight ferry from Chios...which we actually thought we missed. A ferry pulled in and left and we continued our game of crazy 8s countdown. I was worried and made Sas go ask the question at the ferry lines office. Thankfully the girl laughed and informed her our boat would be next...pheeewwww!

Th boat was ok, Catherine and I had a beer and a game of tag on the empty top deck while Sas immediately pulled up a piece of floor by our seats to try and get some zzz's. We soon joined her and poof 9hrs later we were exhausted, not very well rested and in Athens. Thankfully we were able to check in right away but not before our hotel manager grimaced at our plans to travel to Albania and why? and how hard it would be? This spurned a little miscommunication between the three best friends as to what the plan should be to get to Croatia. After a bit of sleep I did some research and asked the hotel guy to make some calls for us. We found we could go directly to Sarande (our first destination in Albania.) In any xase we spent the day touring the Acropolis and the ruins of Hadrian's Gate and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. After this we made our way to the metro station that was near the Albanian bus companies. We found out we would have to take a bus that night to effectively keep to our plan.

No worries, the bus was cheap, just 25 euro Athens to Sarande. We bought our tickets and set off to re-pack our things from the hotel we would not be staying at in Athens! Oh well, the shower and morning snooze were worth it.

We boarded our bus at 8pm and set off on what proved to be a bit of a hair raising bus ride in which no sleep happened. The bus was lacking in the shocks department, the roads were plentiful in the bumps department and the driver was gonna get us there on time come hell or high water! We moved to the back of the bus and faked sleep to avoid watching the road. Crossing the border was no problem but even the Greek border agent scoffed and made a comment about going to Albania and what was the point? We continued on despite the clear Greek love of their friendly neighbour to the north (more on that later). A road full of switchbacks and narrow turns and we arrived in Sarande exhausted. Alittle dazed we managed to find our hostel...