For the first time in what seems like ages I didn't have to pack up my bag this morning. We had a 9am start and with the one hour time difference could not managed to sleep in past 7:30am. I had a leisurely breakfast and got into the bus.

We drove to the site of Cyrene which is a Greek settlement dating back to 700BC. We visited the museum first and I stood there being annoyed that we were forced to listen to a guide blathering on about crap. I, in fact spent most of the day annoyed at this fact. Here in Libya it is compulsory to follow a guide around at all the ancient sites. Something which I absolutely despise. After the guide stopped talking we were given ten minutes to look around ourselves.

We moved on to the impressive temple of Zeus and again had to stand there for the bulk of our time listening to crap I didn't want to listen to. I really need to learn the art of blocking people out, or at least invest in some ear plugs. We were given twenty minutes to look around here. I was last back and took substantially longer than twenty minutes. Screw it, I thought, I haven't spent thousands of dollars and come over 20000 kilometres to have twenty minutes here.

We got back into the bus and went to have a look at the city. This consisted of about two hours of being hurried around the site and then given 20 minutes to have a look around at the end. In case you can't tell I'm getting substantially annoyed. I don't want to be annoyed here, I've spent two years wanting to come to Libya and sought out a specific tour to get myself here. I spent quite a lot of the day trying to calm down.

The city itself was amazing, it had the most intact Gymnasium I've ever seen and the wall of heroes still survives here, showing the victors in the Olympic and Pythian games. We visited the circular temple of Demeter and the temple of Apollo, which overlooked a spectacular Mediterranean vista. It had a spectacular theatre, well at least it would have been spectacular before the earthquake of 365 BC. I ventured into the underground dressing rooms, to find them full of rubbish and stinking of urine. I climbed out dry retching, maybe you Libyans should spend less time bad mouthing the Egyptians and pay more attention to how they look after their ancient sites, I thought to myself.

It was now time for lunch, which lasted a over an hour, most of this time we watched BBC and the guide, tour leader, driver and police officer sat in chairs and chatted. I found this really annoying, I was sitting here in a hotel lobby bored out of my mind and had just been rushed around one of the places I came to see.

After lunch we visited to site of Apolllonia, which had been the harbour of Cyrene.Most of what was there to see were churches from the Byzantine period, except for a very impressive Greek theatre overlooking the spectacular sea.Again we were rushed around.

We arrived back at the hotel in Al-Bayda around 4pm, the sites are open until 7pm, what was the hurry? No idea. There is NOTHING in Al-Bayda, I discovered this last night when I ventured out to get dinner. What am I supposed to do here with the rest of the day, the hotel doesn't even have internet. I tried to think what I would have done if this was the Dragoman trip and I had been in this situation, of course the answer was I would be watching Red Dwarf, with Siobhan and Dave, or playing killer bunnies or bananagrams. What I wouldn't give for some good company. Even if you are in a totally boring or bad situation, you can easily make the best of it if the company is good.