Hello from the ferry terminal (Pireaus) before our ferry to Santorini.
We have had a brilliant and surreal few days really. Left Athens on Monday (20/11) to drive towards Olympia (on the west coast of the Peloponnese), via Mycenae. Got to Mycenae in the middle of the day and visited the ruins of a fortress area that has been inhabited since the 14th C BC or so. The ruined buildings there date back to about the 7th Century. The city is in an amazing setting on a hill with a big wall where there isn't natural cliff. It was a quite advanced community with 2-storey houses and there is an ancient cistern. It's basically a tunnel dug down to a natural spring, but this is pretty amazing stuff for so long ago. The lady at the entrance mentioned something about a tunnel we could enter if we had flashlights. Well we had one good one (on Johnno's head) so we walked down the tunnel that has been used for hundreds of years ago and found where they got the water from. Was an amazing experience - there is still water at the bottom (& there was even a bat)! Now would this ever ever be allowed in litigation-conscious Australia??!!
View of the ruins from the road - a bit hard to see but it's a big fortressed city.

View over part of the ruins and surrounding Argos Plain.

Johnno and I searching for debris in the ancient spring at the bottom of the tunnel that is 18m below the surface of the ground inside the fortress (and outside the fortress wall).

The entrance to one of the amazing tombs (called 'thollos' or 'beehive tombs') built in this area. Lei and I were struck by the Egyptian feel to them!

So after BRILLIANT Mycenae (& feeling on top of the world) we needed to get to Olympia that night. It was only a few 100 km but because of the scale of the roadmap we didn't realise the windy-ness of the road. We drove and drove for ages through pokey little towns up and around mountains (apparently there are ski resorts in this area). Until... we spotted a huge sign beside the road saying 'STOP, road closed'. So we hooked a left turn over a bridge thinking it was a detour and ended up in a little town with 3 people in a cafe. We asked them for directions to Olympia and they were adament that you could drive the road with the Stop sign. Johnno asked about fuel, because we were getting low, and they said Olympia - about 20km. Johnno was fine about that distance. So off we went (by this time it was about 9:30pm). Anyway, we were driving for about 1 km and the car decided to turn itself off... We had run out of fuel. In the middle of farming land, no houses, no street lights, no moon. With fuel can in hand we walked back to the little town with our tails between our legs, hoping that someone would help. Luckily for us there was a bar full of about 15 farmer men, worry beads and drinks in hand - most of whom owned tractors/trucks that took diesel and therefore had hundreds of litres in their sheds... After lots of very mesmerisingly fast Greek conversation backwards and forwards, Johnno was directed to a ute with one guy (who couldn't speak one word of English) and Lei and I got a lift in a sexy Subaru WRX, back to the Mondeo. The donator of diesel provided about 25 litres worth, which was amazing, and neither men would take any $$ for it! We truly felt that the gods of the region were looking out for us (thank you Hera and Apollo).
The car getting a drink (& the two top blokes who helped out)

We finally arrived in Olympia about 10:30pm and found a fantastic hotel (50 euro incl break). After a big sleep-in (we deserved it!) we visited the Olympia ruins - the place where they've lit the Olympic flame for its journey around the world, since the 1936 Berlin Olympics (thanks Hitler, for the idea). We ran some races (again) in honour of the Olympic Games and checked out the Temple of Zeus. There wasn't really much left, just foundations pretty well, as some conqueror decided that it should all be destroyed. Interestingly, the artefacts collected from the site are a bit different to those found in Mycenae as there is a lot more evidence of Asian/Syrian influences - a lot more griffins and lion feet for cauldrons cast/hammered of bronze. Of course lots of little bronze figurines, which are very cute.
Lei and I getting into the spirit of lighting the Olympic flame

The great Olympic footrace, this time Claireus is victorious. Leilanidite Persistentus the Bright tried gallantly.

One of the fallen columns in the temple for Zeus - no columns survive standing due to earthquakes. The top of the temple was 20m heigh and housed a huge ivory and gold statue of Zeus noted as one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. Historians think it was taken by Constantine to Constantinople (Istanbul) and it was destroyed by fire in the end.

So many little horsies, dogs, birds, cows...

So after the Olympia site we wanted to drive to Pireaus to stay there the night before the ferry to Santorini at 7:25am the next day. Was a nice drive and was quite enjoyable due to having sunlight, despite some major delays due to road-relaxing (allegedly roadWORKS but leaning on a shovel, dancing around or smoking cigarettes hardly counts as work in my book). Anyway, staying in Pireaus was a BIG MISTAKE!! Pireaus is a HOLE of a place. Don't stay there if you can possibly avoid it (smelly, annoying touts, expensive rooms for what you get, and noisy traffic).
More Pelopponese traffic :) We liked it though.