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Published: October 5th 2010
Well, that title might be a tad misleading. How about "Albania is for litterers"? That might be a little more appropriate. More on that in a bit...
It's difficult to summarize travel in five countries all in one blog post, but here goes...
This post covers:
Italy
Greece
Albania
Kosovo
Macedonia
This is a large post, so if you like, just scroll to the countries that interest you.
Flight to Rome: At the gate for our Chicago-Rome flight, we volunteered to give up our seats in exchange for $800 in United Airlines vouchers each, good for one year. I can't believe there isn't a stampede to the boarding desk when this sort of offer is announced. The whole "downside" was an extra connection in Munich and arriving two hours later than we originally would have. Gee whiz, people. Doing this allowed us to see the "very German" Munich airport, and offered spectacular views flying over the Alps on our way to Rome.
ITALY
ROME: In Rome we walked everywhere, taking in most of the historical sights in our first day. Thanks Rick Steves!
On our second day we saw the Vatican and St. Peter's
The Ice Queen
Eats Machiavelli for breakfastBasilica. Now, I'm not Catholic, but I was a bit shocked at how grandiose these structures were. Yes, they are amazingly impressive, but when considering all the resources and lives spent building them, were they really worth the expense? I'm not convinced. My apologies if that offends any Catholic readers. Let's hope Pope Benedict isn't a rabid fan of travel blog websites, and that no goons are sent to "straighten me out".
Overall, we really enjoyed Rome. It's large, but very manageable on foot. Pizza and gelato gluttons like us will love it. The people watching is great too. I was delighted that all the Italian stereotypes I was aware of appeared to be very accurate! Italians yelling at each other in traffic (or anywhere really) while gesticulating wildly, men dressing in outfits that would be considered "borderline" anywhere else, and diners pinching their fingers together with their palm upturned to express the deliciousness of a dish, it's all there.
VENICE: We arrived on the night train at 6 A.M. and LOVED the city. Having all those alleys and canals to ourselves was indescribably amazing. We were enchanted. It was with true horror that we watched our little slice
The School of Athens
By Raphael, my favorite Ninja Turtle of heaven turn into a nightmare within 5 hours. The hordes were suffocating. Before our trip, our friends Matt and Nancy had told us their differing opinions of Venice. Apparently Matt had loved it, and it had left Nancy less than thrilled. At 6 A.M., we were convinced that Matt was right about Venice, and that Nancy was a nut job, but within a few hours, we had to side with Nancy (sorry Matt). We got on a train to Florence that evening.
FLORENCE: The city of brotherly love! Or maybe that's Philly. Florence is gorgeous.
We took in the Uffizi, the Accademia (site of The Statue of David), the bridges, the gelato (our favorite place being GROM, which offered "the best gelato in Italy"), street performers, great views, cathedrals, and made some new friends courtesy of the 22 person hostel dorm room. Highly relaxing, Florence was probably my favorite big city we visited in Italy.
CINQUE TERRE: This place is hard to believe. Five tiny towns built right into sheer cliff walls, all connected by a long footpath along the coast.
By inquiring with a local restaurant manager upon arrival, we managed to rent a sort of
Pieta
By another Ninja Turtle... Maybe Splinter small apartment in Manarola for our two nights here.
The walk between the five towns is beautiful. Really beautiful. The first leg of the walk (dubbed the "Walk of Love"), features locks all along the path, apparently closed together by visiting couples. Rick Steves informs us that this craze was popularized a few years ago by a hit Italian novel. The Italian equivalent of "Twilight" perhaps? Who knows. For Italy's sake, I hope not.
One fun experience was watching a water polo match in the marina of Vernazza. I would imagine that battling waves while playing water polo would be pretty difficult, but the players seemed to manage just fine. Cinque Terre was my personal highlight of Italy.
MILAN: We kind of cheated with this one. We really only visited Milan's famous cathedral, the Duomo di Milano. Of all the Gothic cathedrals that took five centuries to complete, this one is probably my favorite.
The train ride to Milan was eventful, thanks to my inhaling almost two boxes of the super high-fiber (and appropriately named) cereal "Nice Morning" during the previous 12 hours. To top it off, I repeatedly accidentally used the women's bathroom on the train, much to
the amusement of the young Italian ladies present. Italians provided me with plenty of laughs during our travels here, so I suppose it was only fair to return the favor.
GREECE
VOLOS: Never ever visit this place. There's a university, so I guess it makes sense if you're a student studying there, but otherwise, I can't see a good reason to go to Volos. We came here only because it was where our 8 euro Ryanair flight left us. We touched down in some Greek military airport filled with fighter jets and camouflaged aircraft hangars. Welcome to the middle of nowhere. At least the Ryanair flight was entertaining. It's like being immersed in one long commercial. The attendants get on the intercom and bombard you with various Ryanair sales pitches every few minutes. From packs of crackers priced at twice the cost of your ticket, to the "exclusive" Ryanair smokeless cigarettes (these really intrigued me), I imagine it's pretty close to what one would experience if P.T. Barnum were still alive and in the airline business. The trip also offered the most entertaining in-flight magazine ever, apparently written by middle school students.
Oh, P.S., Greek is an absurd
language. Have you ever seen it? It's like communicating via math equations.
SANTORINI: Due to a lack of sufficiently cheap hostels, we passed on Greece's mainland cities and hopped straight onto a boat bound for Santorini. This place is berserk. An explosion described by our Lonely Planet guidebook as "possibly the largest in recorded history" left Santorini with a caldera of unbelievably steep rock cliffs. Towns were built on the very edge of this caldera, offering some of the craziest views I've ever seen. I have a business suggestion for you, dear readers: If you ever find some previously undiscovered cliff with breathtaking views, cover it with restaurants and hotels, and watch the money pour in. Build it, and they will come.
Arriving in the port of Thira (Santorini) is like being a little bunny rabbit hurled into a pit of snakes. I swear you could see some of these hotel and car rental reps drooling as they descended on us. Fortunately we had found a place online and contacted the owners to pick us up from the ferry. Imagine Jabba the Hutt. Now imagine him being super gracious and hospitable, with brilliant blue eyes and speaking Greek, and
you have John, our hostel owner. We stayed in his hostel (located in Perissa, site of the island's black sand beach), all week and loved it. Well, I did. Amanda got mauled by bed bugs our first night there, so she might not endorse it quite as warmly as I do. Her fault for being so tasty.
Around this time my eating disorder with Greek yogurt began. Disorder as in, I would eat gobs and gobs of it, and then eat more. It was pretty obscene.
Amanda went swimming in the sea nearly every day. The sun was so intense that even my trusty SPF 70 wasn't enough, and I had to seek the shade for much of each day. Such is the life of the semi-albino.
On several days we took buses to visit the towns of Fira, Firostefani, and Imerovigli. We enjoyed two of the famous sunsets in the town of Oia, and had a fantastic dinner there our last night on the island. If you ever visit Greece, I highly recommend you visit Santorini.
ATHENS: Of course we saw the "must-see" sights: The Acropolis, Ancient Agora, the first Olympic stadium, etc. But sadly, we will not
This is where the magic happens
Where the men are seperated from the boys leave raving about this city. The chicken pitas and the ancient Greek sites are about all Athens has going for it, unless you consider people shooting heroin on the sidewalk in broad daylight in the middle of the afternoon the mark of a great city. It's a shame that a city that used to be the pinnacle of civilization has become such a nasty mess. I had some little toad try to pick my pocket on the Metro (I noticed, and thwarted his attempt), so I'm no doubt biased from that anecdotal experience, but even before that ugly incident I wouldn't have recommended spending more than a day or two here. And I don't seem to be the only traveler with that sentiment.
CRETE: Crete was great, probably my favorite place I traveled in Greece. I started by exploring the city of Rethymno with a Canadian guy I met at the hostel. Rethymno had lots to offer: a beautiful harbor, nice beaches, a Venetian fort, and friendly hostel folks. History buffs will love learning about Rethymno's storied past, but my personal highlight was watching three young boys stuffing their friend in a dumpster and closing the lid on her.
No worries, everyone was laughing and having a good time, especially me.
At the suggestion of my new Canuck friend, my next stop was the small beach town of Plakias. The "most southerly hostel in Europe" was probably my favorite one in which I've ever stayed. Within 20 minutes I knew I'd made some great friends. The next three days were filled with all sorts of fun: beach volleyball, guitar sing-alongs, swimming, raki, ouzo, being the only clothed people on the nude beach, river walks, group dinners, etc. I had a ball. If you ever find yourself in Crete, this is THE place to stay.
Next I headed to Hania, another major coastal city in Crete. It was alright, but there weren't any hostels, and to me it just paled in comparison with Plakias. One night there was more than enough for me.
Finally it was back to Heraklion, Crete's capital and primary passenger port. I had planned to meet a couchsurfer here, but those plans fell through. I made the best of things by exploring the whole city on foot. I visited the archaeological museum, walked through all the major plazas, and saw the grave of Nikos Kazantzakis (the
Morning in Venice
Somehow I caught myself off-guard taking this author of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ, among other works). I also visited Knossos Palace, which was probably the ceremonial and political center of the Minoan civilization and culture. Interesting group, those Minoans. But I guess interesting alone doesn't get your civilization to the 21st century, does it? I keed, I keed...
One fun experience was going to a restaurant offering a 5 euro "all you can eat" special, and making the manager weep. I'm joking, he didn't really weep. He looked more disgusted than anything else. But they definitely lost money on that one.
ALBANIA
TIRANA: I got to Albania's capital city via a 14 hour bus ride from Athens. I was definitely the only non-Albanian onboard, and my presence was pretty amusing to most of the others making the trip. One Albanian girl that spoke some English struck up a conversation with me:
"You speak Albanian?"
"No."
"But you're going to Albania."
"Yes."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Are you crazy?!?!"
And from a later conversation:
"How can you tell I'm not Albanian?"
"Because you look like angel, we look like devils."
Almost every Albanian I talked to was very friendly,
but they all seemed to think that every other Albanian (aside from his/herself) was some sort of bloodthirsty pirate that would steal the shirt off my back. Maybe they just like to think they come from a dangerous place, but I actually felt extremely safe during my time here.
One fun detail about Albanians is that they shake their heads to say yes, and nod them up and down to say no. To make things more fun, Albanians that deal with tourists have tried to adopt the "nod for yes" approach, which makes things twice as confusing.
Bunkers! Albania is covered with tens of thousands of bunkers. Small concrete domes with slits, each weighing about five tons of concrete and iron, they were built to repel an invasion. Now, they are mostly used as free love hotels and toilets. They are literally everywhere.
Finally, the littering. Apparently a reaction against harsh communist-era rules on littering, Albanians now seem to delight in having the freedom to chuck their garbage wherever they like.
Perhaps my favorite thing about traveling in Albania was that they love Americans! In most countries, telling locals I'm American gets me a furrowed brow and a really clever
joke, like, "Say hello to Bush for me." But in Albania, people lit up like a Christmas tree when I said I was American (read up on the Serbian ethnic-cleansing campaign and U.S. involvement in Kosovo to understand why). Even locals that spoke absolutely no English could muster a few words when I told them where I was from: "America good. George Bush good!"
Over half the cars here seem to be Mercedes-Benzes, supposedly many of them stolen from Western Europe.
Albania still has blood feuds! The Kanun (Code) instructs that if a member of a family (or one of their guests) is murdered, the male members of that family must settle the blood debt by murdering a male member of the murderer's family. This goes back and forth until all the male members of one of the families are dead, or a truce is settled. All in the name of honor and hospitality. Whatta country!
KOSOVO
PRISTINA: More love for Americans! I knew I was in the right place when I got off the bus and found myself walking down "Bul Bil Klinton" towards the city center.
Half of the Kosovo Museum is dedicated to American involvement
in the independence of Kosovo. It really wasn't entirely the U.S.'s doing, but they have certainly received the lion's share of the credit here. The other half of the museum is basically a repeated request for the visitor to please help Kosovo get their best artifacts back from Serbia. Apparently, in 1999, Kosovo lent almost 1,300 of their finest artifacts to a Serbian museum for a special exhibit. Since then, only one item has been returned. And it's about five inches tall. Ouch.
I just spent a day in Pristina, arriving in the morning and leaving for Macedonia in the evening, but it was plenty of time to explore the surprisingly compact city. Highlights included the bazaar area, the indescribably weird looking National Library, and meeting up with some Finnish and German friends from Tirana for a Chinese lunch.
MACEDONIA
SKOPJE: Macedonia was the first country I've been to that uses the Cyrillic alphabet, so that's been a fun challenge. I've more or less learned the alphabet, so I can read and at least somewhat pronounce most everything I see, but unless it's a location, I really haven't got much of a clue what anything means. But it's
still fun. I get a kick out of trying to read every street sign I see on bus rides: Охрид, Битола, България, София, etc. I can't help but try to read and pronouce just about everything I see written.
The hostel I stayed in was, for whatever reason, packed with South Koreans. I had intended to go straight to bed the moment I arrived, but they convinced me to join in for "Korean night". One of them, Hondo, was riding his bicycle from Spain to Egypt. He's been at it for four months, and was now a little more than halfway through his journey.
Hondo, Yoonseon, and I explored Skopje's Old Town, Trvdina Kale Fortress and enjoyed a great kebap lunch.
The day I left for Sofia, Bulgaria, was "White Day" in Skopje. Apparently on "White Day" every shop in the city stays open all night long, so the streets of Skopje are filled with people until the morning arrives. I was sad to miss such an event.
Hopefully, it won't be so long until the next post. Until then, lots of love and best wishes!
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Amanda
non-member comment
thank you...
...for catching that the split second before I burst into laughter! ps. I love you.