YOU GO SLAVIA ALBANIA! - Part 6: Cool Country + Cool Flag = AWESOME
August 19th, Gjirokastra:
I woke up refreshed and in good spirits after what began as a stifling hot night in this old Albanian hotel. The morning was clear and as I walked out onto our balcony I saw that we had a great view of the Gjirokastra Castle.
The sun was rising swiftly on the city...
It was fairly early as we drove through the old town towards the castle, most of the shops were still closed...
We parked outside the castle, paid our entrance fee, and went inside...
There was a nice view of Gjirokastra behind us...
Including the hotel where we had stayed the night. The balcony with the wide-open door was our room...
Inside the castle were artillery cannons from World War II...
And an old tank...
Outside was an old American spy plane that had crash landed in Albania in the 1950's. It was displayed throughout Albania to feed the paranoia that Albania had to be on its guard against the world's superpowers.
I had a narrow escape...
Rok and Peter were bad pilots...
The castle ruins were cool and relatively unspoiled...
I continued my escape...
Like the castle in Berat this castle was not all prettied-up and touristy. The castle was built by the Byzantines in the 12th century then added to and used throughout the years by the Turks and Albanians. Some parts were still covered with vegetation...
It was here I collected my rock of Albania...
There was an old clock tower on one end...
And a stunning view over the UNESCO-protected houses of Gjirokastra. The roofs of many of these houses are made from a special type of local stone...
Amidst the overgrowth on the castle were many flowers...
Workers were building a stage for one of the many folk festivals that are held here...
Rok started climbing around a bit. So we followed him...
We ended up on a part of the castle that was obviously not part of the tourist route, but it was cool nevertheless...
Looking northwards over the castle...
Inside, the passageways were still littered with debris from the past centuries and also just plain old litter...
We finished our tour of the castle and took a drive around it...
We then came back down to the old town...
Electrical safety?
We grabbed a bite to eat at a local bakery, the baker there was thrilled to have foreigners in his shop. Then it was time to start driving again.
It was a beautiful morning as we drove past the folded hills and villages of southern Albania...
Throughout our driving in Albania we would often see police officers at roadside checkpoints pulling people over. I guess they were checking for insurance and registration or something. We never got pulled over. Why? Well, we had a foreign license plate and most the police officers don't speak English or any other language (certainly not Slovenian!) And so it was never worth the trouble.
Eventually and finally we reached the coast! We pulled into the town of Sarandë and got a glimpse of the blue Ionian Sea...
We didn't stop in Sarandë, we headed further south on a small dirt road along the coast. We could see fishing boats out beyond the shores and across from us were the Greek islands of Corfu...
oh yeah... and more bunkers...
We came to within about 3 miles of the Greek border but went no further. Now, some of you, and even me at one point, would have said "hey, if you are that close to a new country you should totally just drive over the border, get your rock and passport stamp, and drive back." However, we learned that everything in Albania takes a little bit longer and we were pressed for time.
Also, you couldn't continue on the road to Greece without waiting in line to take your car across on this small ferry...
But it didn't matter because we had actually reached our destination: Butrint!
Butrint is the jewel of heritage sites in Albania. Here is a multi-layered archaeological birthday cake of different cultures and peoples who have lived or ruled this part of the world.
The ruins were neglected and completely shut off from the world until 1991 and then in danger of looting and further ruin until 2000 when UNESCO and the Albanian government declared the region a national park.
There are structures and artifacts that are prehistoric, ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, Sicilian, and Turkish (ironically, little Albanian).
Butrint is also one of the ancient world's best kept secrets. Although this was by far the most tourist-friendly place we saw in Albania, and the most crowded with a lot of day-trippers from Corfu, Greece; it is still relatively unknown and doesn't have to deal with the heavy tourist burden of many similar sites in Greece and Italy. As one British scholar, John Julius Norwich, put it:
"Of all the great classical sites of the Mediterranean, Butrint is the least known, the least frequented and the least spoiled. Visiting it today must be very like visiting Ephesus or Baalbek a hundred years ago. If you yearn to lose yourself in romantic meditation, alone among the ruins of a once-great city, then Butrint is the place for you."
We entered the park and came to some extensive Greek foundations...
Including a 3rd-century BC Greek amphitheater...
It was also quite warm.
Roman baths...
A Byzantine baptistery...
A 6th-century Byzantine basilica...
With bits of ruin still just lying around...
Massive ancient stonework put together without mortar! It reminded me a lot of the ancient Inca architecture of Cusco...
This is a Greek stone relief over a very short gate of a lion taking down a bull...
Leading to ancient stairs lit beautifully by the afternoon sun through the trees...
Overlooking Butrint is the medieval Venetian castle built on what was once the acropolis...
We went inside...
The Albanian flag waved proudly in the air...
A poorly-posed Nate with a cannon. In the background are the Greek islands of Corfu...
Hot and sweaty, we left Butrint and drove a few kilometers north on the coast and found a beach to cool off on. The sea beckoned to us as we parked. The cow mooed...
It was a hot, sunny August day and so the beach was lightly crowded with Albanians.
As with most of the Adriatic/Ionian coast, this wasn't a sandy beach, but rather a pebbly one. It was actually kind of nice because it meant that we could enjoy the beach without getting all sandy...
Some adventurous souls were jumping from the rocks jutting out from the coast. Behind the jumpers is Greece. During the communist years daring Albanians trying to escape would try swimming the straights here. With patrol gunboats and bunker patrols, few made it across alive...
The water was perfectly cool and felt wonderful. It was also astoundingly blue...
A little sea-arch in the rocks...
So I swam out to it and took a picture. Without snot.
After enjoying the beach for a few hours and getting some sun we went back to the car. There we found one of the cows trying to eat a plastic bag. Rok and Peter tried to help him but he just got scared...
We drove north through Sarandë and on further northwards. We passed many resorts, half-finished resorts, half-begun resorts, and half-destroyed resorts. All of them pretty ugly...
Most of the beaches had little restaurants and facilities. This one even made use of their large bunkers...
The drive north through the afternoon sun was beautiful though a bit hazy...
It was also somewhat slow going. The roads were winding and single-laned. We often caught some great views of the rugged coastline...
In the late afternoon we stopped again at a beach. We ate some dinner at the beach-front restaurant (notice the hanging bag of water to keep the flies and bees away)...
We then enjoyed another refreshing swim in the cool, clear water...
Of course we usually just used our towels as our "changing rooms" (no, I'm not wearing a t-shirt)...
This generated some interest, and I got some new fans...
After enjoying the beach for a bit, we continued our drive northward, occasionally getting stuck in traffic in the small towns. It was a chance to stop and watch the people a bit more...
The sun went down through the haze...
And we drove on for several hours through the darkness. We eventually came to the town of Fier where we had some pizza...
We drove as far north as we could before Janez was too tired. It was around midnight when we decided to just pull into a roadside hotel somewhere between Fier and Durrës.
It's the one hotel I have no pictures of. We arrived tired, showered and slept, and were off again early the next morning.
It had been a long but full and fun day.
Here's the map of our journey with the red line being our route that day...
Cowlisthenics...
Coming up next: Nate's Birthday and the Land of the Black Mountain
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