Balkans                                          2016

Balkans 2016 Albania Kosovo Macedonia

Balkans - Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia - 2016

 
At the end of this day I have just experienced, I feel as though I have been privileged to see some of the least known but most special places in the world.  I’ve broken my record for the trip; 385 photos in one day today.
The day began with an hour long pre-breakfast walk from 6:30am around the steep streets of Gjirokaster, bathed in a beautiful golden morning glow that made photography a joy.  We started by walking from our hotel uphill to the main intersection in the old town, the Qafa e Pazarit, where the castle looked magnificent in a brooding sort of way, rising up above the old, white-walled, slate-roofed buildings.  We continued in a large clockwise circle, admiring many of the unique 19th century (mainly 1830s) houses that give Gjirokaster its distinctive atmosphere.  
This section of our walk finished at the Ethnographic Museum which I was especially keen to see, not to go inside (because it was, of closed at 7:00am in the morning), but because it is housed in the birth-house of Albania’s post-war Communist leader, Enver Hoxha.  The building surprised me by its large size; Hoxha certainly didn’t come from poor peasant origins!  Interestingly, there was quite of bit of apparently pro-Hoxha graffiti on the lower parts of the building facing the street.  Like his contemporaries, Enver Hoxha cultivated a personality cult, but there is (of course) no evidence of that today.  Indeed, the graffiti on his birthplace is the only mention I have seen of him around the country apart from a souvenir stall that was selling coffee mugs with his portrait.
We returned uphill, and continued our ascent along the ramp that leads up to Gjirokaster castle.  We didn’t intend to enter the castle (which is not possible before 9:00am), but we enjoyed the good views of the old town in the morning sunshine.  The air was crystal clear, with just a light photogenic layer of clouds sitting on the top of the hills on each side of the valley.
We returned to the hotel for breakfast, and set off in our car for the day at about 9:30am.  Our main destination for the day was Butrint, in the far south-western corner of Albania.  To drive from Gjirokaster to Butrint, we had to cross the Gribe Mountains, and there is no easy way to do that apart from driving on narrow, twisting, poorly surfaced roads that go up and over the mountain range.  The road we took was probably the most heavily used of the three alternative roads.  It was therefore the one with the best (though still a poor) surface, but it had the shortcoming of having to encounter cars and trucks coming in the opposite direction intruding into our side of the road.  It was therefore a slow drive, with lots of use of 1st gear to negotiate steep slopes with hairpin bends, but we reached the coastal city of Sarandë a little before 11:30am.
Sarandë is largely a tourist resort town, which seems to be growing rapidly judging by all the new building construction work underway.  Most of the building is for new hotels, and it is clear that Albania sees tourism in Sarandë as a significant income earner in the years to come.  We made a brief stop on the waterfront in Sarandë to see the beaches and tourist development, but didn’t stay long because we knew that we would have to pass through the town again tomorrow for the next stage of our travels.
It was just a short 14 kilometre drive south to Butrint on an excellent road that was built for Nikita Khrushchev’s visit in 1959, and then upgraded in 2010.  For part of the trip, we had a clear view of the Greek island of Corfu, located just a few kilometres across the water from the Albanian coastline.  Butrint is an ancient city listed by UNESCO on its World Heritage list.  Largely an archaeological site, Butrint has evidence of a succession of civilisations, starting in the 8th century BC, and progressing through Hellenistic (Greek), Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman (Turkish) phases.  Each of these civilisations changed the morphology of the city, remodelling the constructions of earlier governments and contributing their own new buildings to the city.  The site is clearly labelled in English as well as Albanian, and the maps and diagrams brought the changing history of Butrint alive, as did the excellent museum that is housed in the Venetian-era castle.
Following Google Maps (whose accuracy we now know through personal experience is often sub-standard in Albania — like, REALLY sub-standard), we understood that the main archaeological site of Butrint was on the southern side of the Vivari Channel, a small waterway that connects Lake Butrint with the Adriatic Sea.  To get to the southern side of the Vivari Channel, it is necessary to take a two minute trip on a tiny vehicular punt that is happiest carrying one car (or no cars), but can manage two at the time if really necessary.
We made our crossing, and visited the triangular Venetian castle that was apparently built to protect the fishing nets during Venetian rule.  Not seeing much else of note, I consulted my other iPhone app that I use for navigation (CityMaps2Go) and discovered that the main archaeological site was on the northern side of the Vivari Channel where we has been a few minutes earlier.
Fortunately, the wait for the punt was short and we were soon on the northern side again.  It was easy to see where the gate into the archaeological site was located because several busloads of tourists, comprising a couple of hundred people, were exiting from the gate as we arrived at 12:15pm.  They were walking to have lunch at a large restaurant a couple of hundred metres along the road.  So, it turned out that 12:15pm was an excellent time for us to arrive, because we had the entire archaeological site almost to ourselves.
And what a site it was!  During our hour and a half visit, we saw a Venetian tower built in the 15th and 16th century, a 4th century BC chapel dedicated to the god Asclepius, a Roman amphitheatre built in the 3rd century, Roman baths built in the 2nd century, the Agora (Forum) of the Roman-era city, a pagan shrine that was later converted into a Christian church, a Roman civic house from the 5th century that was later converted into a palace, a 6th century baptistery with a (covered) mosaic floor, a 2nd century fountain dedicated to the Nymphs, a huge 6th century Christian basilica, several gateways through the city walls, an acropolis dating back to the 8th century BC, and a Venetian castle of the 14th and 16th centuries.  It was easy to see why Butrint is (as my guidebook describes it) “far and away the most visited archaeological site in Albania”.
We began our return trip to Gjirokaster at a little before 2:00pm.  We took a different road across the Gribe Mountains, one that was higher.  Although it was in worse condition (with potholed bitumen that had, in many places, completely broken down into an unsealed surface), it therefore had far fewer cars, and it was good to see a different set of views.
We returned to our hotel at a little after 4:00pm, and as the clouds and rain had not yet arrived, decided that this would be a good time to explore Gjirokaster’s top site, the castle.  Dominating the hill overlooking Gjirokaster and the entire valley of the River Drino, the castle was built in stages, with most of the current structure dating from Ottoman rule in the early 1800s under the semi-autonomous of the local ruler, Ali Pasha Tepelena.
We walked up to the entrance along a cobbled stoned roadway, and after entering the castle, turned left into what is known as the Great Galley, a high, vaulted roofed, cavernous passageway containing artillery pieces from World War II, and a rare Italian Fiat L6/40 tank.
Emerging from the gallery, we came to an open terrace with great views of the old town, and at the far end, the wreckage of a US Air Force Lockheed Shooting Star two-seater fighter.  It apparently strayed into Albanian airspace in 1957 while flying over Italy, and was forced to land by Albanian MiGs.  Although the pilot was released after a few weeks, the plane was kept by the Albanians, and despite is somewhat sorry state of disrepair nowadays, it sits atop the castle as if standing guard over the town of Gjirokaster below.
The area within the castle was quite extensive, and even included an open-air stage for performances.  However, it was the views from the castle that made the visit especially memorable; views over the town, views across the valley, and views along the valley in the opposite direction to the town of Gjirokaster (to the south).
By the time we finished our castle visit, it was 6:00pm, and having missed lunch, that meant dinner time.  We discovered a brilliant little restaurant within walking distance of our hotel called the Kujtimi Restaurant, serving local dishes of excellent quality and very affordable prices.  Our only regret was that we would not be in Gjirokaster tomorrow night to return to this great little restaurant.Balkans_Travel_Diary_2016_12_files/IMG_7757.jpgBalkans_Travel_Diary_2016_12_files/IMG_7848.jpgBalkans_Travel_Diary_2016_12_files/IMG_7952.jpgBalkans_Travel_Diary_2016_12_files/IMG_7991.jpgBalkans_Travel_Diary_2016_12_files/IMG_7848_1.jpg

Day 12 - Gjirokaster, Sarandë, Butrint, Albania

Friday 10 June 2016