As I had spotted that Corfu was so close to Albania, I decided while we were there we should hop over the border and see a different country. Inspiredg to a neighbouring one... not quite as adventurous, this was only going to be an hour on a ferry, but still. This was just about the only thing planned in advance for Corfu, for me anyway.
Clare was apprehensive about it, she kept encouraging me to read The Pillars of Hercules1, Paul Theroux does not have much nice to say about Albania. I never did get round to it, but I will also admit it seemed to be a place people have been getting away from recently, rather than visiting. I turned out to be lovely.
Trip started off a bit shakily, these things often do, a 7am start, a rushed breakfast, then waiting for a bus outside the hotel. Twenty-five minutes later it arrived, twenty-five minutes of us worrying we'd got it wrong or missed it or something. We were the only pick up at our stop, but there were hundreds of others going on this same trip, of various nationalities.
We had to queue in the blistering heat at Corfu Port for about 90 minutes, passport control was very very slow. We could see our boat waiting for us, with other passengers sat aboard it for hours waiting for us. The customs control was a bit odd, there were the usual baggage checks and metal detectors, but everyone set the detector off and no-one cared... This sounds familiar oh yeah I told this tale already.
The boat across was a reasonable sized passenger ferry, room for a few hundred people, a bar area we could sit inside, a sun deck that filled up right away, and various other options. We sat mostly inside on a sofa in the bar, sharing with some arrogant youths who were spread out a bit much, but also went to the front of the boat in the open air, nice view, nice breeze, got a few pictures there.
No real restrictions on the Albanian side, they must run it all in Corfu. We arrived in Saranda, a nice Mediterranean resort type town. We met coaches to take us onwards to Butrint, there was a coach for each of probably four other languages (French, German, Russian, maybe Spanish?) and then two for English. We had a guide called Zhulie who gave us a commentary on our way to Butrint, and did our tour around there too. Butrtint was an ancient Greek and Roman city that was abandoned at some point because of flooding and earthquakes, so is well preserved, not having been built over. Really cool really interesting, different parts of it from different eras, but all really old. From there we went to a local bar for a beer, from there to somewhere quite out of the way for a buffet lunch. It was a big bar restaurant type place far from everywhere else, a really nice setting though. After lunch we went back to Saranda for a walk up and down the prom. Lots of gifty type shops open there, though most of the real places would have been closed for siesta time. It was hot, sunny, a proper holiday resort, not at all what I'd been expecting from Albania.
We did see some begging in the street, children, but it did seem a bit half hearted, it wasn't as bad as I'd been led to expect. Tourism is bringing money to Albania, and it seems lots of people who have left are returning again and building new places with their Western money. I really enjoyed what I saw of Albania.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in A small town, Kent. Wed + father to two, I am a full-stack web engineer, + I do javascript / nodejs, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubbing, running, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.