Day #9 Thursday January 4, 2012
Back to
Tirana today. Only one more night in
Albania. We could have done a lot better
tour if I’d believed the people who told me things would be closed and NOT
believed the people who told me that things would be open. Well, we hear what we want to hear. How true.
We are
supposed to visit several places on our trip back to Tirana. One place being along Lake Ohrid which
borders Albania and Macedonia is on the other side of the lake. IF ONLY, we had skipped Saranda and just gone
over this way and popped into
Macedonia. Oh well. Always easier to design a trip after you have
done it.
So we are
heading towards Pogradec and Drilon.
Drilon is a small town on the lake where the former dictator had a
summer home. Of course, then it was hard
to even get into the town much less onto his grounds and see his swans
swimming. Now it is a restaurant. We have to go over several hills to get there
and as we are coming down the side of one mountain, all the sides of the
mountain are terraced. They have a light
dusting of snow on them so it is hard to tell if they are also farmed or
not. Klodi tells us they have cherry
trees on them. I would imagine it is
beautifully pink and white when the trees blossom. Then to the dictators home. It is in a lovely setting and there are
plenty of swans swimming including some cygnets or young swans who haven’t
attained full white plumage yet. There
are also some noisy ducks who quack loudly and head for anyone on the
banks.
We walk
around the lake and over a bridge to where there are a couple of dammed sites
and one side of a small bridge has carp and one side has trout. They are supposed to be some kind of big deal
fish but they were just trout and carp.
Not even koi. Back towards the restaurant for a cup of coffee and then I
decide to buy some sunflower seeds from a man sitting outside under a
tree. I get two packets of seeds which
have very few seeds in them actually but they only cost a few cents. Off to the bank to give to the ducks. Of course, the ducks are down at the far end
now. I start to throw the seeds to the
cygnet and the man yells no and comes over and quacks at the ducks who start
coming towards me. Guess the seeds were
only for the ducks. Back inside for a
bathroom break and a coffee and then back to the car for the rest of the ride
to Tirana.
We drive
along Lake Ohrid for a while. There are
a number of resort hotels and apartments along the lake and most look pretty
empty. There are also a number of boats
pulled up on the shore waiting for summer.
Then we start passing men who are selling fish that they have caught in
the lake. A couple of times we pass
someone who looks to be selling crabs but can’t really tell because Klodi is
not afraid of driving fast today.
We go
through another deserted copper mine in one town. Most of the windows are broken out of the
main building, as usual. Passing cemeteries,
bee hives, hay stacks, sacrificial bears for good luck hanging off of roofs and
eves. Passing lovely houses tucked into cliffs, train
trestles, and once a whole lot of people standing on a hilltop for no apparent
reason. All things that I have tried to
take photos of several times and never sure if I have a good one. If I stopped the car for each photo I wanted,
we’d never get anywhere. We pass through
Elsedan where there is an old city wall but it was a drive by to look at
it. We did ask for a toilet which always
seems to surprise the male guides. I
think it should be mandatory for any male guide with a female client to stop
every two hours for a restroom break.
Men seem to be able to go all day without one. We stopped at a small restaurant and went in
to use the toilet. Passed over a hill
looking down on a town where was another large communist factory abandoned.
It is all
up and down hills all the way to Tirana.
Klodi says they are digging a tunnel that will go this way and no more
up and down hills. It should be done
this year. Finally past some road
construction into Tirana and we are telling Klodi we need lunch. It seems pretty certain he just wanted to
dump us at the hotel and be done with us because I am sure we have not been the
easiest of clients with our fruit and veggie stops and “it’s cold!” but my husband says we need lunch before we go
to the hotel. It is well into the
afternoon but Klodi swings up a side street and takes us to a restaurant were
we have a lunch and then he takes us to the hotel and says he will see us
tomorrow to take us to the airport.
Our flight
leaves at 2:20 and he said 1:20 would be plenty of time but I asked to be there
at 1 to give us a little safety so he agreed.
We get
rooms on the 10th floor of Tirana International hotel this time and while they
still want our passports, they do not make us pay 20 euros per room this time
for the mini bar possible usage. We want
to go out a bit and see the Christmas market that is down the street and looked
to still be in operation. So we walk
past the mosque and to the market. A lot
of it has already closed up and left. It
wasn’t so much of a market left as it was food stalls and bars and some toy
stores. We did see a Cobo winery booth,
the winery we had visited. Back to our
local fruit market where the stall sellers know us by now even though it is
only our 4th time there. And
as we ate lunch late, we spend another quiet evening in the hotel, our last
evening in Albania for this trip.
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