Last night was horrible and the journey took about four hours longer than it should have done, fourteen hours in total. We drove through the outskirts of Tirana around sunrise which was breathtaking. Tirana is surrounded by mountains in every direction so the scenery is beautiful despite the houses being rather primitive. The bus dropped us near the national opera house which is in a square that is surprisingly picturesque. To find Hotel Endri we had a simple map and address. We found the street without difficulty however we could not see the number or a sign. We asked someone who [View Full Entry]

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Mire! Albania is a hard country to peg having only been there four nights. The people are friendly, but an ex-pat Englishman I met in Sarande gave me his take on the people: friendly, but always looking to see how they can benefit from your friendship; difficult to really know with a hard inner core. I suppose 500 years under the thumb of the Ottomans is bound to make you tough. The country itself is in dire need of strong leadership. Sounds like another country I know. The infrastructure is pretty much none existent in most places. Garbage is chucked willy-nilly, [View Full Entry]

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Woke up and then headed to find a minibus to Kruje! Kruje is the most touristy setup town so far I see in Albania!!! There is this old bazzar that sold all these touristy gifts and stuff...some are coool....esp. the instrument here......but.....argh...didnt get it. The castle was another hilltop ruin.......not very interesting inside...but nice view... Besides this, really not much! haaaa. Theres a museum, but we decided not to go in...... We sat down and had some lunch and then took the bus back to Tirana. Short but pleasant day=) now I just need to find my way to the port [View Full Entry]

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Stroll around Gjirokastra in the morning...walked into this big old house, with an old lady and asked to get inside to see the interior......very Turkish style.....nice big house, too bad its vacant and not carefully maintained....... lots of stray dogs in town and this one was jumping on us and bitting us!! ARGH!!! so scary...and the bit actually hurts...+( Anyways, then went down to take the bus....asked around and a minibus said he goes to Berat! so I hopped on and went.........it stopped at Fier! and asked me to take a taxi to Berat!!! too expensive...so I took the minibus from [View Full Entry]

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Woke up early to catch a bus to Gjirokastra. On the map, it wasn't far..but it was a 7 hours bus ride!!! OMG.....so tired.. Albania has some of the worst roads!!! and they were all winding roads in the moutains! I see a lot of construction going on, so I guess the situation will improve. People are very helpful as well. You just stand at the bus station and ask someone for the destination, and they will somehow get you there. I like it in the city that they don't rip tourist off, which is nice. Only people at the port [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in Durres, Albania, the port was...........basically a flat piece of concrete!!! got through customs and nothing there beside a bunch of cars calling themselves a taxi. So lost, got ripped off and hopped on a taxi to find the bus to Tirana! Once on the bus it was all easy, dropped right off at the train station and I just took the bigest road I saw until I got to the big Scanderbeg Square. kinda walked through and when I thought I was lost, the hostel staff found me and pointed me to the hostel, which was right across the [View Full Entry]

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Tour, what tour? Well this little previous communist country was probably one of the most amusing visits of the lot. After a very long day of driving to Albania, should only take a couple of hours but because of how dodgy the roads are it takes us all day. It’s a completely different world. So when we finally get into the Capital Tirana and meet up with a lady who is going to give us a bit of a tour around town I think, well here we go this will make it worth it. It turns out we drive down one [View Full Entry]

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Our coastal driving of the adriatic sea continued down into the country of montenegro....the seaside stops to beat the heat continued here and it became tougher and tougher to find modes of communication or banks. we happened upon the huge lake skadarsko jazero. the small village on it's banks was too cute...the local fisherman/ hotel owner of the pelican hotel was so nice to take us on a tour of his home which included many generations of his ancestry and personal gems of his fishing years. We stayed that night in a old ladies home...she passed crazy the town of crazy [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! We enjoyed our stay in Durres. Part of the blog that I wrote there did not print. While we were there, we saw a mosque and a Greek Orthodox Church. I don't know how much of the population is Muslim. We have seen a few women with modest scarves - no black burkas. Many of the older women are dressed completely in black with an occasional white head scarf. They must be Greek Orthodox. Late in the afternoon, they close the main street in Durres to automobile traffic. Families stroll up and down the street together. This morning, we [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! It feels great that we have finally reached one of our targeted destinations. We didn't realize how difficult it was going to be to get around in E. Europe. If we could have entered from farther north, we might have been able to rent a car. There are no rental cars here, no trains between here and Montenegro or Croatia, & no ferry to Croatia (not sure about Montenegro). We are going to investigate buses next. We broke one of our travel rules last night when we arrived here at midnight. It was complete chaos trying to get our [View Full Entry]

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