I love long weekends. I also have to mention how much I love
having friends who are morning people. We don’t stay out late, but we manage to
get so much done during our day because we get a head start. Our work weekend
ended at 2:15pm on Wednesday, and we were on the road by 3:00 pm, making it to
Vlore by 5:30ish. Fun sights/occurrences along the way:
1) Scott nearly had a heart attack when a man tried to sell
him a live rabbit by practically throwing it at our window.
2) The cops tried to pull us over, but we acted like we
didn’t understand and kept going.
3) We saw some men running on the highway and thought to
ourselves “what the hell are they doing?” And then we realized they were
running after a sheep.
Vlore was terrible…or maybe we were just unwilling to search
for the beauty and fun.
Upon arriving we found our apartment and after waiting 30 minutes for the guy to show up I was handed a phone with a woman to translate in English. Then we were shown to our room where a man was very insistent on taking some money (about 5 dollars) for security for our car. As in, he was going to be the security for our car and stay and watch it all night. I don’t think so buddy. We ended up eating at Kolanat (McDonalds) for dinner. Basically the burger I had tasted like a boca burger, and the fries tasted like McDonalds fries minus salt.
After dinner, we tired to find a beach to watch the sunset, but failed miserably, so we got some chocolate cake and ice cream for desert and headed back to the sketch apartment. The man then asked for our documents and spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out Cortney’s name. Eventually we figured out that he wanted us to write it down. Once we communicated the hour we were leaving to him we were able to head up for a night of working on lesson plans, which turned into a night of listening to music and talking about water polo, which Cortney thought was like real polo only in the water. Boy did that picture lead to some great laughs.
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| Mountain sunrise |
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| Beer with a Mountain View :) |
The apartment in Saranda was a
little tricky to find, but Cortney was able to use her Spanish skills to talk
with a lady who spoke Italian, and the apartment was perfect for the 4 us, and
super duper cheap. We settled in and put on our swimsuits to head to what is
known as the most beautiful beach, called Ksamil (pronounced like Samil.) This
was also tricky to find since there weren’t any signs, other than one with an
arrow pointing to the right, which we tried with failure. After a few more
tries and a quick walk we made it and dove right in. The water felt great and
after getting out to enjoy a late lunch and some drinks I was freezing. I kept
reminding myself that it was late October, and I just went swimming in the sea,
therefore I couldn’t complain about being cold.
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| Ksamil Beach |
After taking our naps in the
sun we headed back to the apartment to change and head out for some dinner. The
apartment didn’t have wi-fi (only complaint, and such a first world problem) so
we stopped at a café to research some restaurants and prepare for our next 2
days. Scott and Cortney found a pizza place so we headed there and ordered just
about the right amount of food, rather than way too much. We took a little walk
on the boardwalk and found where the ferry leaves for Greece each day. Our plan
was to go on the 3rd day here, but it turns out you are required to
stay overnight, so we made some new plans and headed home for a relaxing
evening of music, wine, and good conversation.
I’m currently sitting on our porch drinking a Nescafe and
looking at the Ionian sea. Today we are heading to Butrint National Park for
some hiking.
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