Day #7 Monday January 2, 2012
Out of
Saranda to head towards Gjirokaster today.
We make Klodi find us a fruit stand before we leave Saranda. We are following the same route as we took to
the Blue Eye yesterday and it doesn’t take us long to zip past the gypsy camp
and past the entrance to the Blue Eye and then up over some mountains which
have some snow on them but the roads are ok.
We are going to stop at Antigone before reaching Gjirokaster. This isn’t even on the itinerary. Klodi says the road has only been open to
this site for a year and prior to that, it was a donkey trek. It is a nice paved road too, not very wide
but certainly one of the nicer roads we have traveled pot-hole wise. There are a lot of switchback curves and up
and downs and at one point, there had been a recent rockslide and only enough
had been cleared to barely let us through it.
We pass through some small villages where cows and sheep are being
herded and there are some lovely persimmon trees that remind me of Korea
because they lose all their leaves before the fruit is ripe so you have bright
orange fruit on stark branches. Quite
lovely.
We finally
pull up into a rather wide parking lot with spaces for 15 or 20 cars. They have high hopes with their new
road. There is a sheep herd on the
fields below us and several sheep dogs.
We walk up to the entrance to Antigone and get some of the history from
our guide. 300-200 BC Pyrrhus, the
husband of Antigone, who was the daughter of Oedipus and his mom (in the play)
built the town for his wife. It is high up on the hill, overlooking the valley,
and had quite an extensive town for the time with an agora, city walls, fields,
etc. It was incredibly peaceful and
quiet up there, very still. The
stillness affected us all in a very good
way We liked it very much as it was so
peaceful.
.
As we
walked further into the city, we saw some people ahead of us arriving at the
Agora area. They were also tourists and
I felt quite indignant that we did not have the place to ourselves. The only other tourists we have seen all week
and they turn up in the place where it is the most beautiful and peaceful. They left before we did though and we still
have quite a bit of time to look at the view and be quiet and all.
This town
was quite a way up the hills and had a great view of the valley and the river
in the valley which was another river that had moved over time. So at one point, it was supposedly great for
commerce and a good place for fortification and defense but how the heck did
they protect the river and how the heck did they get the water from the river
to the homes as they were miles from the river and it would have been hard to
run downhill if they needed to attack someone.
If they had anything down there to steal, it would have been gone and
the people down the river with it before the troops could get down there.
Back
at the car, the sheep have gotten close to the car. One sheep dog is barking at us as we
pass. The other sheep dog comes up to
our daughter and falls all over itself for her attention. Then back the way we came and on to
Gijokastra past a large bunker where someone is living. They have put an Albanian flag on the top of
it.
Over
another pass and into Gjirokastra the birthplace of their former dictator,
Enver Hoxha. It is a pretty little town
on the side of a mountain above the Drino River. There is an old bazaar street that is now
just a nice cobblestone street with a few modern shops along it. There is an old Mosque in the center of town
and there is a castle/citadel on the top of the hill overlooking the town that
has been turned into a weapons museum but it was also a political prison in the
old dungeons too at one time.
We wanted
lunch so we drove to the other side of town and had lunch at a hotel that was
sitting on a man-made lake where we got some rice patties that are traditional
to the area. They were quite tasty and I
had a second helping and took the rest home with us. They cooked our daughter’s vegetables but
then drenched them in olive oil.
After this, we had Klodi write down how to cook our veggies for us and
to say no butter and no oil. We have
also had fruit slices for dessert that have honey drizzled over them and
sometimes some cinnamon sprinkled on them as well. This is quite good and we have had it at
several different restaurants. We were
driving through one section of town where there were a lot of road side stands
with honey we thought. We asked our
guide too late to stop for honey and he said we had already passed all the good
honey. But now is when we have just
started seeing bee hives so we found some honey in Sarande and got it Lunch was sometimes a challenge for our
guide. I think at this point in the
tour, he really wanted to be elsewhere and just wanted to get us from town to
town and then go visit his friends.
We take a
walk up to the castle to see if it is open.
As we are standing at the gate
looking forlornly at the castle, a car drives up and some VIP gets out with his
family and calls inside the locked gate.
A caretaker comes to the gate from the inside and opens the gate for
him. I am very hopeful that he will also
let us in and ask Klodi if it is possible.
At first, it looks like he’s not going to but Klodi keeps talking to him
and he opens the door and lets us in for 500 Lek. Score!
The
entrance hallway is rather grand and long with guns sticking out from each
small chamber to the sides of the long hall.
The guns are WWII and usually rather large bore long range guns. There is a tank there too but it was all so
dark that I couldn’t really take any photos and half the time, my camera
couldn’t even get a focus on anything and if I took it off automatic, it was
fuzzy. We got through the long hallway
and there was a statue to the resistance fighter and then we are out in the
courtyard. In the courtyard are doors
into rooms which have lost their purpose and some steps leading down into the
dungeon where we can’t go but that would be a good part of a tour. In one small courtyard there are a couple of
guns and an American “spy” plane. It was
a trainer jet with problems so had to land in Albania. The government kept it and put it on display
as a spy plane so that they (the Albanians) would realize that their Communist
government was protecting them from the wicked West.
The views
were lovely up here with the sun shining on the snowy mountains on the other
side of the river and the town tucked into the hillside. Gjirokastra is also known as stone town
because everything is made of stone even the roofs. We continued on to the end of the castle with
another larger courtyard and a façade from a 2009 festival that had been held
here. The castle is used for musicals
and such but this was the last really big one held here. We looked at a tower with Ali Pasha’s clock
on it. We also have a good view of a
stone roof there. They are quite well done
and according to local lore, very warm in winter and cool in the summer. Not sure how but whatever.
The VIP
family has disappeared so we have the whole castle to ourselves. It is a lovely view from the end of the
castle overlooking the river (where you cannot see the debris in it from this
high) and the mountains that are copper colored on the snow with the setting
sun. We turn to go back and walk up on
the stage. We were asking about the
dance from New Year’s Eve that we saw the locals doing in the restaurant. Klodi says it is just 6 steps and shows
us. We all try and get it going pretty
good for an impromptu lesson. The steps
make you go in a circle so that’s why it’s always a circle dance. Then we head back out of the castle.
My daughter
tries to light up some of the guns as we walk back through the darkened hallway
to the entrance. I was able to get a few
shots but not so many as it is just too dark inside. The caretaker comes out of somewhere and lets
us out. We thank him profusely and I am
able to say it haltingly in Albanian as I finally got Klodi to write it down
for me and once I saw it, I could practice it.
The caretaker takes off down the street and we walk down the hill to go
down the street in the other direction.
We are
behind the mosque and come around to in front of it and our guide asks if we
want to go see the former dictator’s birthplace which is now a museum but of
course it is closed because nothing is open on Jan 1, 2, 3rd (now we are up to
the 3rd being a day of things also being closed). We say yes so we head around the streets and
down some small hills and tromping on the cobblestones. There are some nice views back at the castle
and some good shots of the stone roofs but I never got a really good shot of
the roofs and never really even thought about it until we saw some postcards in
shops.
We get half
a block from the dictator’s house and Klodi goes “there it is” and that was
it. Of course we have to go back the
same way, up the hills, around the bends and tromping on cobblestones which
haven’t helped my daughters’ injury and haven’t helped my feet but it is always
picturesque to see cobblestone streets.
Awwwww. Oddly, there was a car
sitting on the street that had a Wisconsin license plate. We also saw one in a different town with an
Illinois license plate.
We pass the
mosque just as it is doing its call to prayer.
I don’t notice a lot of men heading towards it. Back to the hotel to warm up. This means we have a small heater in the
rooms as it is not getting very warm in there.
This country is definitely heat challenged. The hotels aren’t having many guests
(sometimes just us) so they don’t heat the rooms until someone comes. That means we are walking into rooms that are
40 something F or maybe 50 if we are lucky.
We needed heaters in Berat, needed them in Fier but didn’t get them, and
needed them in Gjirokastra. Our room
finally got warm enough that we were able to put our heater in the bathroom for
the night which was good because there was a huge gap in the window letting in
cold air. So with the heater, it was
warm enough to take a shower the next morning.
As we pass
the mosque on the walk back to the hotel, a man comes out of a small store or
bar and sees my husband. He stares at him
and walks alongside us on the opposite side of the street. I can tell he is going to talk to us, I
thought. He finally comes over and says
Hi to my husband and “my name is Jimmy” and where are you from and “I speak
German, Russian, Italian and Greek. My
English is not so good”. I just
automatically opened my mouth and said, Oh your English is much better than our
Albanian and then realized that Jimmy was totally ignoring me and didn’t even
once look at me or acknowledge my presence.
He continued to walk besides us a bit and then said goodbye to my
husband and went away. Wow, I’m invisible.
On our way
in Gjirokastra today, we had passed through Leskovik. It was a former communist copper mining town.
Only reason for its existence was for
the copper mine which is now defunct and gone.
The town has not dried up and blown away but I was asking what they do
now. Some of them are into the livestock
and shepherding but not sure what else they are doing and Klodi didn’t have an
answer. We saw another copper mine later
that was also defunct plus the textile factory that we had passed in Berat that
was dead. Not at all sure how these
people are living in valleys between mountains with no industry and no easy way
to get out of the valley.
This
location is quite lovely and the town is pretty but except for the lucky chance
we had to get into the castle, this day would have been nothing more than a
long drive in the country to look at the scenery. We are a bit miffed that our tour company had
promised that these things would be open and set an itinerary that hinged on
everything being open. Live and Learn.
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