Greece - Albania - Croatia

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Wednesday 8th July 2009

Wake up this morning at 6am... had not slept well AT ALL due to the streetlights shining straight into the sail boat cabin which has no door plus I had woken up at 4am with a coughing fit, so it felt like I had only just got back to sleep when it was time to get up and get ready. We had to pack up our stuff and clean the boat and have breakfast this morning before the boat inspection at 6.45am. It has to pass the inspection or we will be charged 40Euro, gulp. Yesterday we had already done the front decks and cleaned out one of the inside cabinets where we had stored the water.

This morning it is all the other surfaces and with 6 of us on the job it doesnt take long. We are given the all clear during the inspection and we are all on the bus and moving out of Plataria by 7.30am. Today we are off to Tirana in Albania!!

Today is not a good day for me as it is a 4 pill day with my headcold and being incredibly tired as well. We go through Greek and Albanian customs at the border but only get a stamp on the Greek side, it doesn't come out very well and WHAT IS IT with these guys picking a page I already have a stamp on! DAmmit, I have tried bending open my book so it falls "naturally open" on pages 18 and 19 which "conveniently" have no stamps in it... lol....

Albania is pretty interesting, it is part of the Balkan states, "balkans" is a turkish word literally meaning mountains, in places it has new roads and buildings and the rest of the roads are narrow and twisty and bumpy but at least they are sealed!! It's a pretty hairy ride in a bus on twisty roads when a massive semi truck and trailer come flying around the corner swaying from side to side!!!

We have 2 toilet stops at new buildings and in the afternoon to while away the time we dedicate songs in the bus using our ipods and discuss our group t-shirt designs for the end of the tour.

We arrive at Tirana at the central square and pick up a guide who talks about the history and all the buildings most of which are painted in multicolours thanks to a recent mayor. Alas I missed most of what this guy said as my ears are so blocked up which compounds my deafness, his accent doesn't help either. After this tour we go to our hotel where we have to walk up hill and up stairs to get to our building and then find we are on the 3rd floor (no elevator) however our room makes up for this, we walk in to a massive apartment with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, lounge, hallway. YAY!!! What a contrast to living on the boats for 3 days!! Tonight it is Joy, Jacinta and I but Adela has been swapped with Kate who is one of the newbies who joined us in Rome and is only with us on the tour til Venice.

Joy attempts to have a shower and we discover the shower in one of the bathrooms cannot be used unless you are cleaning the bathroom, at the seal the water sprayed 360 degrees right around the room and not out the shower head... haha!!! The other one has zero water pressure... wont be washing our hair here unless it's under the tap...!!! The fridge doesn't work either....

I am feeling pretty rotten now, so have dinner which I devour like a vacuum cleaner and hit the sack by 9.30 after taking photos around the pool area which is fabulous..... too tired to use it though....

A couple of things I keep meaning to mention:

there are tunnels EVERYWHERE in Croatia, and Italy and they are building them everywhere too along with the two lane motorways that are going in all over the place, tunnel building is underway all over the place. Also (another roading observation) the single chevrons on the corner have a hazard light mounted on each one and they blink in sequence around the corner... really neat idea!!!

Thursday 9th July

Up at 6.30am for brekky at 7am. Have had a great nights sleep and coupled with the dinner it has worked wonders with my headcold so am feeling a lot better today!! YAY!! Breakfast is yet another strange one I just can't get used to being 2 cold eggs, cucumber, rolls, tomato and feta. And another day passes and no cup of tea, I have stayed off this now for most of the trip and my headaches have also stayed away... am almost too scared to have a cup of tea when I get back home I reckon....

We leave the hotel about 8am and on the bus we are busy ordering our tour t-shirts, recording email addresses and deciding on the optional excursion into the Postojnska Caves in Slovenia in a few days.

Today we stop in Montenegro for lunch!!! We stop at a supermarket first and stock up and later in the afternoon we stop near a beach and get to cruise the markets for about 30 minutes.

Oh that reminds me ( I am reading this in my travel diary) one of the funniest things that happened while we were sailing was that there were some problems with one of the boats and contacting them and our tour guide came on the RT and said "Can someone please roger me? (if you can hear me)" and this has become a catch phrase on our tour now.... poor Brooke is never going to live this down!!!

Anyway driving through Albania the fields are sweetcorn, mown or flowers in cerise or mauve. In Florence we were driving past fields of sunflowers. Albania is a land of contrasts really, there are big new houses and old ricketty shacks, plain concrete buildings and vividly painted buildings, the ground is either really rocky with scrub or fertile flats (which seem few and far between). There are a lot of road and building construction works underway and this is related to either preparation for entering the EU or a result of America's big interest in this place as yesterday we passed the oil fields...... with pumps all over it just like that James Dean movie Giant.... 😊

Albania is also similar to Egypt that they don't finish the construction of their buildings because a finished building attracts taxes so they have a roof which is actually the floor for a "future additional storey" to the house....

Another interesting observation is that men are everywhere! They are the ones outside in the coffee bars in groups talking and having coffee and walking everywhere etc - I have seen women around but they are few and far between and are seen hurrying off to work or to the shops. I think this must be related to when the muslim faith came to this country.

In Croatia we do a photo stop at the top of a hill that looks down on the city and we do a group photo - no idea whose camera it was done with but hope I get to see it one day!!! We get there and Damo does a brilliant job reversing the bus up this narrow (two way apparently) road up to the hotel we are staying at and I now realise I forgot to take a photo of this... 😞

Anyway I need to do washing still but again no facilities, tonight we have dinner and shower and we can catch the bus into town for a big night out but I am trying to keep my massive lemonade drinking ability secret for a while longer and so Jacinta, Joy, Adela and I hang out in one of our cabins having a drink and playing cards instead. Mossies are a BIG problem where we are staying!!! Cabins are stifling as the AC doesnàt work and we have to have the doors and windows closed thanks to the little vampires....

Had a shower and discover its built for 8ft giants, I have to stand on my tip toes to be able to hook the shower up and I shower in fear that I will fall through the floor as it is flexing WAAAAYYYYYY more than I think it should be..... feels like thin MDF.... gulp!!!

Tomorow we are off to the Old City of Dubrovnik for our free day...

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