Day #5, Saturday December 31, 2011, New Year’s Eve
We are a
day behind, officially, according to our itinerary. We were supposed to hit Apollonia yesterday
but we didn’t make it. Oh well. The shower has hot water so that is good but
the water is coming out of a wand which I didn’t bother to check the position
before I turned on the water so was hit full in the face with cold water first
thing. Brrrr. My daughter ended up with the same
problem. Here is her take on the hotel:
“I also had the same problem. I ended up getting water all
over the bathroom because the wand wasn’t positioned correctly. I had actually
looked to check that the shower head was positioned correctly and figured it
would come out of there but the water came out of both – hence the water
everywhere. This hotel was also newly renovated – it was the first time our
guide was staying at it after the re-work. None of us were impressed. It was
styled as modern art type which made it a bit sterile and cold. Thus, with
surly staff and lack of service, it was the worst hotel we stayed at. They also
kept their poor German Shepard chained down in the parking lot. He did not look
happy. During breakfast, the server – who didn’t really serve anything, pretty
much just stood behind us and watched us the entire time while her (or some
other staff)’s kids watched cartoons on the TV.”
My husband & I got up in our 18C room, never got warmer
than that, about 64F., and went downstairs to breakfast. It didn’t look very promising but a lady
motioned us into the restaurant where there was a table set with the “buffet”. We sat down to see if we would be served
coffee but the lady disappeared. We went
to the buffet table. There were 2 cooked
eggs on a plate (they knew there were three of us there), and the eggs were
cold. There were a couple of hard boiled
eggs, there wasn’t much fruit or vegetables, no yoghurt, and I think there was
no coffee and not much in the way of bread or pastries either. Probably the worst breakfast we had at any
hotel on the tour. (OH, except for New Year’s Day). That plus the surliness of the front desk and
their unwillingness to change our room and the fact that it is supposedly a 4
star hotel and we had to park two floors below the hotel and carry our bags out
to the car this morning. I went downstairs
to see if I could find an exit to the car park but there wasn’t one. Poo. I
wandered around the kitchen area and electrical area and laundry area but
nothing for guests to get to the parking lot.
So we weren’t very happy with this hotel. My review on Trip Advisor reflects this
all.
We were
downstairs ready to go at 10 which is the time Klodi gave us. At 10:15, I called his number and he
obviously was still in bed. He was quite
startled and said he’d be right down. It
still took him another 15 minutes to make it to the lobby.
We haul out
with our suitcases but I was lucky and Klodi took mine down the stairs. Into the van.
Our daughter has relinquished the front seat to me so I can take photos
but she and I are both taking Bonine to make sure we are ok on the curves and
swerves. So we are finally off to
Apollonia this morning on a hill top and take some photos of some cemeteries as
we pass and also some of the bears hung in houses being built to ward off evil
spirits. Usually these bears or dogs are
hanging from the rooftop or hanging from an aerial.
I am
worried that I do not have a good turkey photo yet so I told Klodi that if we
see a bunch of turkeys, we have to stop so he can hold one for me so I can get
a photo. So that is what we did. We passed a flock of about 8 turkeys with an
older man and a stick. We stopped and
Klodi went back to talk to him. I don’t
think he ever told him that he was doing it so I could take a photo but told
him that he was interested in buying one for dinner. I am out of the car and walking towards him
because I expected him to wave me in but as usual, all the Muslim men ignored
me so I just kept walking closer and closer and then Klodi is running after
turkeys trying to catch one. They are
very adept at running and gobbling just a few steps to stay out of the
way. Another man in a red jacket joins
the chase and he is the one that finally runs a turkey down and tackles
him! I think the red jacket man was
another turkey owner and just was having fun tackling the turkey. I wonder if all buyers have to catch their
own? Klodi takes it from him and I am
snapping photos and there is a lot of
positioning by the turkey as it flaps it wings and wiggles and tries to escape
but Klodi finally has him by the feet and is holding him upside down. He is still talking to the man and I am
taking photos then ask if I can hold him.
He’s one heavy bird. Klodi talks
some more and puts him down and we leave.
Later he said that the bird was 700 lek per kilogram and we worked it
out to about $60. He also said that he
told the man he would think about it and when we came back by maybe he would
get it. Of course he had no intention
and when we did drive back by, he tried to go fast through the area but our van
is a rather distinct Mercedes Benz red with foreigners in it so the turkey
owner recognized us and tried to flag Klodi but he ignored him and drove
faster. I’ll bet that old man remembers
Klodi or at least the red van next time he comes through with some other
tourists.
We pass
some of the omnipresent bunkers but these are quite large ones. Most have
graffiti on them include the biggest one that says Hi Mom. Now we are on smaller roads and there are
several donkey carts that pass us and a horse cart. Always some sheep in the road almost every
day as well. Sometimes cows as
well.
Apollonia
is a huge site but like most in Albania, not a lot of excavation has been
done. At least this place is much better
than Durres in that they could do a lot of excavation. High on a hill top and no modern village or town
built on top of it. There is a large
façade of a former building which might have been a Prytaneion – basically a
place where the leaders of the local government met. Also a couple of Stoas or ancient streets
that were straight as a rod. There was a
library and an Odeon, some baths, some noble’s house and that’s about all we
got from Klodi that I recall. We did
pick up the brochure and there is a lot more information about the rocks and
walls and ruins than what we got and also must have been some more in other
places as well. Looking at the map of
the site, we only covered a very small portion of it but also looks like we
would have been hiking over quite a distance to see the other ruins and
possibly would have taken too long.
We walk
into the former church/monastery which is a museum. There is a monk standing looking over the
valley below and the wind is blowing his robes.
I snapped a photo but didn’t really get it into good focus. There were statues around the courtyard, all
without heads which are in museums elsewhere.
The church was lovely but the columns along the front of the church (a
covered walkway between the columns and the church entrance) were Byzantine and was more interesting as they had faces on the
tops of the columns on both sides. The
faces were called “frippery” by our
guide meaning a lot of decoration and silliness for no reason. I liked the faces and each one was different
so I took a photo of each.
I was
allowed to take photos in this church.
It didn’t have near the fancy decorations or icons of the other churches
but it was small and nice. At one time
there were frescoes on the walls but they have been scrapped off or painted
over and are gone except for a small blue one on the wall and a bit on the top
of the dome. A double eagle is on a
carved stone set up near the roof on the outside and some writing in Greek
which is very strange for the time period.
We went into another little church that had a lot of damage done to it
and the frescoes were in very bad shape.
We are now
heading down the coast to Sarande which is a resort town and we will spend two
nights there. Klodi has started warning
us that things will probably be closed on the 1st. He also says thought that it is good we are
out of Tirana because the celebration there goes on all night and you can’t
even see outside at night because of all the fireworks smoke. There have been fireworks every night and
often during the day as well as people set off bottle rockets and such just for
fun. We are now noticing a lot of fireworks
for sale along the road and everyone has some for sale.
The
itinerary read that we would stop at Ali Pasha’s castle in Porto Palermo. As we are coming down one hill, we see it in
the distance. It is on a small island
that looks like it might have a causeway.
According to my very old guide book, it said you could visit this castle
and there was no entrance fee. According
to Klodi, it is closed and all we could do was stop for less than 5 minutes and
take a photo. We would have learned a
lot more about Ali Pasha had we been able to visit Butrint but since we
couldn’t; he fades into the background of our knowledge. He did undertake a lot of building in Albania
and we did see some of his stuff but you can take an “ali pasha tour” to see
his works and buildings and aqueducts and castles.
We are
almost to Saranda when we drive up a steep hill to the Lekuresi Fortress that
overlooks the bay and the island of Corfu.
This is when we first realized that we were so close to Greece. I never remember what is in the
itinerary! Lekuresi was waiting for us and
had our lunch ready. We did not get to
choose the menu as they are giving us some traditional food things . It actually had looked like they were totally closed but they
were getting ready for their New Year’s Eve party. Still, they had food for us and it was good
and they didn’t mind cooking our
daughter’s vegetables.
Some things
we have learned. So far, only Tirana
(with one exception) has any stoplights and those are questionable at best
since there are traffic cops messing up the works everywhere. In Vlore, we saw cops with guns who were
searching a car and the people in it. Skanderbeg’s
flag is the flag of Albania which is a double eagle. Mostly men are the shopkeepers, a lot like
Turkey and if they aren’t shop keeping, they are sitting around in cafes and
coffee bars drinking Raki, or coffee, and chatting with each other. The women don’t chat on the streets but hurry
from one errand to another and then go home. Also in Vlore, we saw a salesman
whose trunk was totally full of mandarin oranges. Where the seas join in Vlore, there was a
secret submarine base but wasn’t quite as secret or prohibited as the one in Balaclava
in Ukraine. Dhermi was a village totally
on the side of a cliff with one church and one mosque. Vuno was a village with one stoplight.
We are at
the Hotel Butrinti which is 5*. As we
walk into the hotel, only one person at the desk speaks English. The lobby is full of tables and chairs with
nuts in dishes on each table and huge speakers on either side of the entrance
and a Christmas tree that has been pushed back to almost blocking the elevator. Our guide told us that no one eats dinner
before 10 and especially not on NYE. We
didn’t want to wait that long but he said no one would be ready before
then. We finally compromised on 9.
We ask for
the quietest rooms we can get. Pretty
sure we are almost the only ones in the hotel again, maybe one or two other
guests. They do tell us the party
downstairs will not start until midnight.
Great. Pretty sure we will get no
sleep this evening. There are two sets
of 5 speakers stacked on top of each other
in the lobby and they reach to the ceiling. Of course, we end up in rooms right over the
speakers. We ask for rooms at least on
the other side of the hallway and are told that would be worse because there is
a club back there and they will stay open all night and be much more
noisy. We do have a great view out of
window though of the city which has a promenade around the waterfront. There is also a view of Corfu, the Greek
island, right across the water from us.
There is a daily ferry to Corfu.
While in the room, the lights are flickering several times and the TV
would go out and the lights would go out.
Then the lights would come back on because the hotel had a generator
which ran the lights but pretty much nothing else. This happened several times but the lights
and TV would always eventually come back.
This was of great concern too because we didn’t want to spend another
night with no heat and then no hot water later.
We later heard it was because too many people were busy cooking their
fancy dinners and such and once that peak passed, the power stayed on ok. We did take the stairs down when we left for
dinner.
We get to
the fruit stand before it closes and stock up for tomorrow. I get some sunset shots of Corfu. We get ready to go out at 9 for dinner. Our guide comes to get us but we are not
driving, just walking down the street to the restaurant. When we get there, a few people are already
there for dinner as well and some more come in so people do eat earlier than
10. There is a man tuning up his
clarinet with a speaker. Have never seen
a wind instrument with a speaker attachment before.
The meal is
a set menu and several courses. We get
starters of some fried little seafood
bits which included octopus and squid but some tasty tiny shrimp. And I’ve totally lost what else we had but it
took a long time to get the food and a long time between courses. By now, the musicians have started playing
music which sounds a lot like Greek and the largest party there starts dancing
which is a lot like Greek, 6 steps around in a circle. I am not a late night person so didn’t last
much longer but headed back to the hotel
where I could read and get into my pajamas and enjoy the rest of the night.
We were
reading and watching TV at midnight when we heard fireworks and looked out. It
was beautiful because there were fireworks going off all over the city so we
could see the outlines of the town and the buildings and then bright colored
fireworks over many of the buildings. It
lasted a good long time. It was
beautiful because the bay was in a crescent shape so we could see the fireworks in a long line following this
crescent shape of the city. People were
shooting them off in so many locations that at times, the whole city across the
bay would be lit with colored fireworks.
There were people shooting them next to our hotel as well so we had
fireworks in front of us and firewooks to the side of us. Cast a few glows on the water and made
everything look like fairytale land.
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