Trip to Sarande, Albania and Corfu, Greece No. 1

      My little family took an amazing trip to Corfu, Greece, a few weeks ago.  I would have blogged about it sooner; however, I succeeded in cutting large pieces of two of my fingers while using a mandolin and haven't been able to type with ease for quite some time.  :)
     Our trip to Corfu took two days.  Leaving Tirana in the early afternoon of a Friday before a long weekend, we got our first lessons in: traffic, mountain passes, the fact that it takes at least twice as long as the locals say it will take to get somewhere, and various and sundry other quirks in Albanian culture.  Suffice it to say, we had a very eye-opening and unforgettable time.

     It took us over an hour to get out of town; but once we did, we saw the most beautiful landscapes!  I've blogged before about the "pill box" bunkers Albania's former dictator commissioned throughout the land. Well, we passed hundreds, if not thousands, of them across the mountains and coast.  Some of them are open for visitors; others are absolutely buried after years of neglect and landslides.  One thing along the ride that was interesting were the massive, barely-full riverbeds.  We suppose that the upcoming rainy Winter season will fix that.  How I'd love to get a metal detector and explore one of those riverbeds!

     The mountain roads in Albania are treacherous to say the least, but they have some pretty amazing things to offer the tourists anyway.  One beautiful town that we passed through (the name escapes me) was built  over a natural spring.  Apparently the natural springs are well-known, and there were tons of cars and trucks that would pull over to fill up jugs with the cool, crystal waters.  This was an interesting part of the trip, considering that the mountain roads have no shoulders!   We saw restaurants built over running water, where they fished right out of the springs!  Some of the stores and restaurants were built right into the mountains and caves.  

      We were warned ahead of time about a nine or so mile stretch of road that was only gravel.  There were no signs for it, of course; we just ran out of road!

     The actual mountain pass to Sarande (Albania's "Riviera and the first stop on our road trip) was a bit scary.  There were hundreds of hairpin turns up and down a mountain chain with very few guardrails.  An interesting part of the ride was the insane number of memorials on the sides of the pass for loved ones who were lost (died) on the roadway.  There were often photos and memorials of the victims, and I finally lost count.  When seeing how people actually drove along the pass, I understood why there are so many casualties along the route.  The cars and motorbikes would fly around us and around blind turns at full speed, with no regard for their own personal safety or the safety of those who might be coming around the turns!

     Six hours and some severely frazzled nerves later, we arrived in Sarande, Albania.  An interesting thing to note is that Google Maps and navigation do not work in Albania; so we never REALLY knew if we were going the right way.  We were able to get a round about map of the route, but we had to rely on the very sparse road signs we'd see at times to make sure we were going the right way.  It took us another hour to find our hotel, which was a very clean and out-of-the-way place run by a nice family.  It was dark when we got there, and the kids were tired and hungry.  We were able to keep them busy until the hotel's restaurant opened for dinner by showing them the game room!  Unfortunately, it was way too cold to put them in the swimming pool; so they had to settle for billiards.

     Dinner was a really fun affair, because we were the only people in the restaurant.  The kids ordered french fries and "fried cheese."  I assumed this was an Albanian grilled cheese, but I was mistaken.  It was better!  They took a huge chunk of Edam cheese and grilled it by itself.  It was delicious.  We ordered the grilled fish, the first time we'd had it in Albania.  Boy, was I surprised when they put an entire fish--head and all but gutted, thank God--in front of me.  I had to put lettuce over it's head in order to eat it, but it was absolutely delicious.  The kids ordered ice cream, and we retired back to the game room.  The hotel room was reasonably comfortable and spacious, and we got up early to drive the hour and a half into Greece so we could catch the ferry to Corfu.  The wonderful thing about European hotels is the traditional breakfast that's always included in the price of the room!  So, after some Nutella toast for the boys and cheese sandwiches for us, we were on our way!

     Well, the drive took longer than half an hour, of course, especially with the small issues we had at the border.  We were told to enter Greece on our regular/civilian passports due to the fact that diplomatic passports have to contain a visa for entry.  Well, we realized at the border that our oldest's blue passport had expired in April!  We offered them our diplomatic passports, which they decided to accept, thank goodness; but then came the trouble with the car.  See, our car was still in route from the States; but a really kind member of the embassy community had lent us his while he was out of town.  When the Greek customs officials found out it wasn't our car, we were really afraid that they weren't going to let us in.  They said that if the Albanian authorities would grant us international car insurance in both the car owner's name and my husband's name, they'd let us in!

     Back to the Albanian border we went; and, surprisingly enough, we were greeted by a woman dressed in civilian clothes and wearing a fanny pack.  She told us she could help us with the insurance and brought my husband into her office.  Well, what a surprise: she was the boss!  She made change for the 20 or 30 Euro fee from her purse, and off we went back to the Greek border!  The supervisor for the customs agents agreed to let us in on our diplomatic passports without a visa and in a car that wasn't ours with one exception: that we actually return in two days as promised and that we return a little slip of paper he wrote up that gave his "ok."  We shrugged our shoulders and off we went!

TO BE CONTINUED...