Days 30 – 31: Albania [Sarandë]

Day 30 – Friday 20^th July

After departing by bus from Athens last night a bit after 10pm, we arrived to Sarande, Albania, very early this morning. As usual, sleep on the bus was impossible. Crossing the border from Greece took about two hours, normally it’s boring enough but so much worse at 3am.
Luckily our host was waiting on the street to greet us in when we finally arrived in Albania. Seeing as there’s not really any street signs, let alone bus stops. It seemed that people just got off wherever they needed to be dropped. Tommy, our host, is an overly helpful bloke and his favourite expressions are “no problem”, “don’t worry” and “I’ll take care of it”. Turns out there was a problem upon arrival; he had overbooked his hostel but he kept his word and did take care of it by letting us stay for a few hours in an apartment until the people in our bed were ready to check out. After a couple hours sleep, at about 11am, Tommy came to take us to the hostel. Second problem: there’s no water at the hostel which wasn’t to be fixed until later that afternoon. This was quite strange but didn’t matter too much as Jen and I were pretty keen to explore. After loading up on some local currency; 15,000 leke, we caught a bus to the ancient ruins of Butrint, an old Roman city approximately 45 minutes from Sarande.

Butrint, Albania

Fire the cannons!

The Baptistery at Butrint

Here’s a little bit more info about The Baptistery at Butrint:
“By the 5th century AD Christianity was flourishing at Butrint and the city had its own bishop. The Baptistery and the Great Basilica were constructed in the early 6th century. The Baptistery was discovered in 1928 by the Italian Archaeological mission. It is the second largest baptistery in the Eastern Roman Empire, the largest being that of Hagia Sofia in Istanbul.

Every aspect of the architecture and decoration of the Baptistery is symbolic of the baptismal rite, with the fountain on the far side of the Baptistery representing the fountain of eternal life. The intricate brightly coloured mosaic has representations of land (animals), air (birds), and water (fish), symbolizing aspects of Christian salvation.

The attention of the visitor crossing the threshold of the main entrance is held by two large peacocks in a vine growing from a great vase. The peacocks symbolise paradise and immortality, and the vase and grapes, the Eucharist and the blood of Christ.” – From website.
After wandering around for a couple hours we took another bus to Ksmili, a small beach village on the way back home, and relaxed there.

Chillin’ at the beach

That evening our friendly “no problem” host, Tommy, took all the guests down to the beach where he dug a hole and made a bbq right there on the sand and cooked up a pretty delicious dinner.

“Dad, I dug a hole”

For a Friday night the rest of the city was pretty quiet, even down at the towns most “happening’ bar. It was still nice to walk along the beach at night.

Day 31 – Saturday 21^st July

Another local attraction close to Sarande is the beautiful Blue Eye, a natural spring about 30 minutes bus ride from the town centre.

Welcome…

Jen and I went with two lads from the Netherlands, staying at the hostel with us. Once there we went in for a very, very quick dip. After about ten seconds my lower half was numb from the coldness, but the water was amazingly clear. The Dutch boys spent a bit more time in the water, being that they’re more accustomed to the cooler climate.

 

Days 25 – 29: Greece [Ios and Athens]

Well…
It’s been over a month between posts and time really does fly! Jenny and I have been travelling for almost three months now and with only two weeks left I really have to update this. I think the next few posts are going to be heavily imaged based and I’ll update the words later on.
Luckily I have done some writing, I just haven’t made the time to update this until now.
So here goes:

Final days of Greece

Day 25 – Sunday 15^th July

We caught the ferry from Santorini today to the party capital of the Pleiades. Ios is basically a party island packed full of tourists aged from 20 something to early teens. Our friends Kirsty and Jack met us there, who are staying at the same hostel we are, The Purple Pig. The hostel is about 2 minutes walk from the start of the beach and about a 10 minute drive from the port where we arrived, and were met by a transfer bus from the hostel. The Pig is run by Georgie, whose parents own it, but he’s the boss man, and probably one of the best blokes ever. He’s a real genuine guy, always happy to help out everyone. Having nice hosts have really made it an even better experience.

Jack had already met the whole island and made friends with 2 lads aged 17, Yani and Joe, who acted more mature than us, and were great value! Jack also had his cousin Sam there, and another of Kirstys friends, Tez, met us there too. So we had about 10 or 12 of us rockin’ around the island.
After a short stroll down the beach we went for afternoon drinks at the ‘Far Out’ beach club, all set with a dance floor and pool. Far Out is where most of the island (well, those that are awake) go during the day, while others recover from last night.
It’s a bad choice to start drinking before sunset as everyone doesn’t hit the town til about midnight so we stayed in, just having beers on the balcony tonight.

Day 26 – Monday 16^th July

Talk about the hard life – today I stayed in bed til around midday then hit the beach and sunbaked for the rest of the day!
After a hard day at work, we all went out for Mexican at a restaurant about 5 mins walk up the hill called ‘Harmony‘ [voted #1 restaurant on the island]. There were lots of Aussies dining and working there. Another bad decision was starting to drink with dinner and back at ours after that. By about 11pm I was knackered and decided to have a nap. I was woken up after 1am when the others called a couple of cabs (there are a total of five cabs on the whole island) and we went in to town. The main part of the town, pretty close to the port, is absolutely packed with tourists! They were all over the streets, jumping from bar to bar and pashing all along the way. We visited nearly all of the bars as they’re so densely packed in to one area. One of the popular hangouts with most of the drunks, ironically, is called Rehab. Check out a guide to the rest of the clubs here.

 Day 27 – Tuesday 17^th July

Another late rise, around noon, which has been a nice change to be able to sleep in after so many early mornings in Turkey.
Our crew decided today that we’d go and get a pedal boat to go for a cruise around the water. The hire shop commented, “it’s windy out there today – stick close to the rocks and you’ll be fine.” I asked if it’s safe to go out and he sort of laughed and said “you’ll be fine on the way out, but the way back might be a bit of a struggle.”

It’s a bit choppy out today

We got two boats between the eight of us and followed Jack out to a cove where we tied the boats up and climbed some rocks to jump off a 7 meter cliff.

Docked and climbing

Up to the top

It was a pretty popular place as there were another two or three groups of people who came out to jump while we were there. We stayed for a couple hours and I jumped off about for times.

We made it!

Me assessing the jump…

Bombs awaaay!

By the time we decided to leave the winds were picking up and the water was pretty choppy so it was near impossible to stick to the rocks.
We ended up getting blown right over to the opposite side end of the beach from where we had originally hired the boats from. While we were trying to avoid crashing in to the rocks the others had beoken their rudder and were stranded out in the middle still. Luckily one of the locals came out on his speed boat and towed them back in to safety while we pushed through the strong current and eventually made it safe back on to land. Turned out to be a very thrilling afternoon!

This is me jumping backwards!

Day 28 – Wednesday 18^th July

Today we caught the ferry to Athens and said goodbye to Jack, Kirsty, Sammy and the others. We’ll be seeing them again soon in Spain. The ferry ride was a bit shaky as the sea eas very rough and I was having flashbacks from yesterdays shocker. I was very glad to be back on land once we arrived. Just had a quiet night out at dinner for Annie and Aidan’s last day with us.

Day 29 – Thursday 19^th July

We all visited the Acropolis today.

Our hostel was within about ten minutes walk which made it nice and easy to get to – especially because it’s just about the only thing to see in the entire city.

Jenny and I

The rest of Athens wasn’t that exciting and I’m pretty glad we only had the one day here.

We went for one last sight seeing adventure with Annie and Aidan to the old ruins. After lunch we said farewell to our travel buddies and it was pretty sad to see them go. We’ve had a blast with them over the last month and Jenny and I are both very glad they came along with us! Look forward to catching up again when we return home.
So long to Greece! Now off to Albania..