Took a bus to Gjirokastra, a World Heritage site, beautiful white stone roofed houses with impossibly steep narrow streets topped by vast castle.
Hotel like staying in a museum, greeted with coffee and a herby liqueur.
Pleasant sunny afternoon wandering around lovely old stone roofed houses up and down impossibly steep, narrow streets.
Tunnel underneath castle.
Lunch 3 small cookedtodeath fish.
____________________________________________
Heavy rain this morning.
Breakfast- stale white bread and 2 hard boiled eggs, Turkish coffee.
Eda at the hotel said she called the bus which would stop outside to take me to Berat at 9 am. It didn't.
While waiting she taught me some Albanian from her 9 year old sons school books.
An hour later got a share taxi ( expensive, uncomforable and dangerous) with two men, a woman and obese driver who spent most of the journey on his phone, letting go of the wheel to gesticulate.
When the woman took a phone call and started to cry, I gave her arm a sympathetic squeeze band and she fell into my arms kissing my cheek and hands.
The men enjoyed playing with my navigation apps, ( not a euphemism) and gave me a bag of oranges when they got out.
The roads are terrible. Driving is bad, under communism only party members were allowed to drive the 2000 cars in the country.
The language sounds Slavic with Turkish and Italian thrown in. It was originally ancient Illyrian with Slavic and Roman influxes. Later the Greeks arrived then Visigoths, Huns, Ostrogoths and Slavs. Venetians took the coastal towns and Ottoman Turks held it for 400 years.
In WW1 Albania was occupied by armies from Greece, Serbia, France, Italy and Austria/ Hungary.
Makes you grateful Britain is an island.
Hotel like staying in a museum, greeted with coffee and a herby liqueur.
Pleasant sunny afternoon wandering around lovely old stone roofed houses up and down impossibly steep, narrow streets.
Tunnel underneath castle.
Lunch 3 small cookedtodeath fish.
____________________________________________
Heavy rain this morning.
Breakfast- stale white bread and 2 hard boiled eggs, Turkish coffee.
Eda at the hotel said she called the bus which would stop outside to take me to Berat at 9 am. It didn't.
While waiting she taught me some Albanian from her 9 year old sons school books.
An hour later got a share taxi ( expensive, uncomforable and dangerous) with two men, a woman and obese driver who spent most of the journey on his phone, letting go of the wheel to gesticulate.
When the woman took a phone call and started to cry, I gave her arm a sympathetic squeeze band and she fell into my arms kissing my cheek and hands.
The men enjoyed playing with my navigation apps, ( not a euphemism) and gave me a bag of oranges when they got out.
The roads are terrible. Driving is bad, under communism only party members were allowed to drive the 2000 cars in the country.
The language sounds Slavic with Turkish and Italian thrown in. It was originally ancient Illyrian with Slavic and Roman influxes. Later the Greeks arrived then Visigoths, Huns, Ostrogoths and Slavs. Venetians took the coastal towns and Ottoman Turks held it for 400 years.
In WW1 Albania was occupied by armies from Greece, Serbia, France, Italy and Austria/ Hungary.
Makes you grateful Britain is an island.
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