July 1, 2
We had a very pleasant day and two nights in Corfu Old Town with a fabulous dinner at Tripas Tavern, tucked away in the middle of the island down twisting, narrow roads (very glad I wasn’t driving), complete with musicians, a man dancing with a table in his mouth and an abundance of food just brought to the table, recommended by our Airbnb owner.
Interesting note: Uber operates in Corfu, but somewhat bizarrely, you have to enter your passport number into the app. No other details are required, now was it checked by anyone to make sure you hadn’t put in any random old numbers. It’s that kind of eccentricity that makes me adore Greece.
R & I also swam in the sea near the port and we all got delightfully lost in the winding streets near the apartment getting provisions from the local shops. An inspection of the Fortress and Durrell Park with R; plus a sunset boat trip with view of the planes landing, cocktail in hand, by Mouse Island.
July 3
After this nice relaxing time (L seemed especially taken with the calm, I think he meant the air quality was different), our journey to Saranda was somewhat stressful.
We got to a cafe near the port in good time for our 1.30 boat and had coffees (me and R) and lemon juice (strangely sour reported L). I said I’d just go and check which of the many terminal buildings it was, so walked towards the port. A nice man came outside and pointed to one in the distance, I couldn’t really see which it was or how far away. So I went back to the boys, ignoring their claims that we had lots of time and chivvied them into leaving. This was fortunate, as it wasn’t the first building we went in; where a rude official, with lipstick you could see your reflection in, just gesticulated and said ‘Out!’ at us. There were a few other people, equally confused, including one who spoke to her in Greek, so I’m glad it wasn’t just me. Then it wasn’t the next either. I even went into the tax office to ask if we were headed the right way – that’s desperation for you!
Eventually we found it some 25 minutes walk from our starting point. There was a large, shambolic queue in the terminal with no clear structure, but we managed to get through passport control and then stood on the tarmac – with a crowd of similarly puzzled people each getting a different boat – with only a tarpaulin protecting us from the fierce midday sun. In fact, we’d have had time, as our boat went half an hour late, a surprise to me, who had always marvelled at the scurrying around of officials, furiously blowing their whistles moments before a Greek ferry leaves, before they majestically and improbably depart on time.
We arrived (it’s only a 30 minute journey) in Saranda and were set upon by taxi drivers, so easily reached our hotel, where the apartment owner met us, leading us through a bizarre underground carpark that was embellished with faux ancient walls and stained glass windows. The owner, plus another random person, took 3 goes to get their card machine to accept my credit card, but we got there in the end.
I had discovered the day before we arrived in Saranda from disgruntled reviewers (equally caught out by the small print invisible to the naked eye) that our apartment which I’d booked from Booking.com was within a resort but not part of it, meaning we had to pay to use the pool.
I parked my disgruntlement, reasoning that three sweaty, tired people needed to cool off. The boys obligingly swam awhile, looked embarrassed at the sinkers and other swim paraphernalia I’d brought especially for the trip (ahhh me, how they grow) and left sooner than me.
It was quite a nice pool, one side of it had a built in bar, so you could sit on a stool in the water supping your cocktail. I didn’t partake of that, as not so much fun on your own. The main problem was the overly loud music, that permeated the whole area from 9am-6pm.
The price for a day at the pool was 7 Euros. The beach was an additional 5. That seems a lot of money to be relieving people of, especially when the sea is just sitting there obligingly. I peered at it from one side of the uniformed barrier. If you’d come for beach, you’d have been disappointed. Some concrete panels jutting out over the water (which was pretty rough) with a ladder to climb in and out, entirely covered with rows of sunloungers.
Later when we’d had some dinner (I had the intriguingly named but sadly ordinary ‘Chicken under a Brick’) and came back – no mean feat because the hotel had an exceedingly complicated layout – we couldn’t get our hammerhead shark-shaped key to work in the lock. After some jiggling I decided to go to the hotel reception and ask for them to call the owner of the apartment, as it would cost a lot for me to call. The man on the desk seemed disinclined to do this and said I could call her by WhatsApp, but was persuaded to let me use the reception phone when I said the number wasn’t coming up on WhatsApp. She tried to give further instructions, but in the end came and gave it the right wriggle to get it open.
Then we played Shithead (a card game which the boys taught me in Corfu and somehow always win).
July 4
A moment of panic because the ATM wouldn’t give me cash with my new, slightly baffling Revolut card, just as we were about to go off on our private expedition with Dorinela our guide. But I got close enough to the hotel WiFi (I was NOT paying £7.39 per day in roaming charges, thanks Vodafone) to see it was because I hadn’t transferred enough cash on there, so it was easily solved.
The ancient World Heritage Butrint site was spectacular and Dorinela was very informative and entertaining and kindly let us visit the café before we went in, for the all important caffeine fix. She’s employed as a freelance guide by Tea Tours and it was the same price (plus starting time when desired) as if we’d gone with a group. How splendid is that, when we had her and a driver at our disposal for 5 hours?! We spent about two hours there, looking at the various melting pots of architecture from centuries gone by, while she pointed out where the school, bathing places, bedrooms would have been.
Then we went to Ksamil beach, which had beautiful turquoise sea and miniscule white pebbles. Sadly, it was stuffed full of umbrellas, lolling bronzed lovelies wearing barely anything and petty officious beach monitors who came to complain about our presence because it was a private beach TWICE and we hadn’t paid for the poxy sunbeds even though we were only going to be there half an hour and had just put our belongings by the side of the jetty.
Then some other buzzkill complaining because we were sitting on the very edge of the exterior wall of their restaurant to put on our shoes – there being literally nowhere else, as it was a car park. Dorinela was very vociferous about the greed and stupidity of all these hotels, crowding the land, buying up the beaches and driving out locals – she hasn’t swum for 5 years she said. We stopped for a quick snack at a further away café, her refusing to let us pay premium prices for beachfront (I would have paid that to be honest, I like to sit with a Coke in a glass bottle overlooking the sea – it only happens once every 3 years or so).
Our apartment owner surprised me though. L had accidentally knocked over the bedside light in their room in the night and it had broken. So I sent a message apologising and asking how much it was so I could reimburse (after all, there was the key incident the previous night so I thought best grovel muchly) and she said not to worry about it.
We had a superlative meal at the taverna over the road. Seabass and squid and prawns, all tasting glorious and SO much tastier than we get in the UK. (Plus some meat for my meaty boys). And a snip at about £25 for the three of us. I also had the entertainment of watching the boys panic at the smallest wasp in the world trying to get to their food. I looked at UK election results sporadically throughout the night on my phone.
July 5
Escaped the hectic Saranda again today. I wouldn’t really recommend visiting it, it’s extremely noisy with all the hotels jammed next to each other, blaring out pop from their poolside bars and occupying the entire coastline, bar one small beach. Not only that, the road behind all the hotels is too small for the amount of traffic going through it and it’s clogged day and night with beeping horns. However, if you look at top picks in Albania, Saranda is always in the top ten with reference to their beaches.
We went on another excursion with a small group to the beautiful Blue Eye Lagoon – a natural spring in the mountainous countryside that bubbles up from a cave that is so deep divers haven’t been able to get to the bottom of it. We dipped our feet in but it was too cold to do any more.
From there to see the sunset at Lekursi Castle, high up overlooking Saranda. I could see one turret and thought it must be a ruin but blow me, if there wasn’t a restaurant in there, plus a band doing an extremely lengthy sound check. It was lucky we were with a tour, otherwise we’d have had to pay to go in. We had a nice half hour there, appreciating the 360 degree view of the countryside (plus Saranda in the distance looking much more appealing) as the sun went down.
Our minivan deposited us back in the town and R and I had a quick dip in the sea at the now deserted dark city beach – for FREE – while all around giant screens were showing the Spain-Germany match. L had raced back as I said he could get pizza from the hotel restaurant to eat in our apartment. We returned to our gaff and watched Portugal-France and then played Shithead again, which I finally won!
July 6
R went back home via Corfu. He left the apartment just before 8.00 to walk to the port. His boat was at 9.00 and we were both slightly anxious that he’d get to the airport in time if it was delayed as the one out had been. Luckily, being the only boat going at that time, it wasn’t. At about 9.15 I wondered if he’d gone past our balcony yet, as the boat had to traverse the whole bay to get out. I went out and could see the boat going past in the distance (quite an emotional moment!). I filmed it and put on Facebook, where someone commented it was like Phil Collins jetting in to Live Aid, except it was a boat to get back to a street party, as R’s band were playing that night. He was always going that day, but we rebooked his flight to an earlier going back to Luton so he could get back in time.
Luke and I left shortly after to travel to Durres. We got there safely, but the absolute SCENES of the bus….! While researching this holiday I read some blogs – from travellers and a couple from locals. One of the locals (who offers tours) had a post about travelling around in which she said there were lots of buses (by which they mean coaches) linking the towns, but you didn’t book them, you just turned up and bought a ticket and the bus would go when it was full. This didn’t sound the most satisfactory arrangement as the journey was nearly 4 hours with a gap of 4 hours after the one I had my eye on (I have done free form travel in my time, but if you’ve got accommodation booked somewhere you want to know you can get there to enjoy it, especially when travelling with family you’re in charge of).
So I looked further and found the Trans Butrinti company where you could buy a ticket in advance for a specific bus. I emailed said blogger, sharing this info and asking if it was legit. She emailed back, reiterating that no company sold tickets in advance.
I decided to ignore her and email Trans Butrinti myself. They got back saying yes, they did sell tickets, so I bought them. I emailed her this info back, but she didn’t deign to reply. I noticed the ticket stated (in perhaps slightly too inconspicuous text) you needed to ‘present yourself’ 30-40 minutes before to confirm your ticket. Being a diligent traveller, I made sure we were there in time and got our tickets, although there was just one queue for those purchasing and collecting, which seeing as there were a couple of other staff milling about seemed disorganised. At one point, one of the staff came to ask some other travellers if they had their tickets as it was going to be full today.
About 5 minutes before they called the bus, an irate woman in the queue started shouting that they’d sold her ticket. The glory of being an English speaker meant we could understand all the conversations going on between different nationalities throughout our trip, as their default joint language was English. In vain the staff tried to point out the disclaimer on the ticket about being there in time. She was unmoved and kept shouting that she HAD been there 30 minutes before. Not, in fact, true. It was an inefficient queue but not that long and I’d seen her arrive maybe 10 mins earlier. I felt sorry for her though – if you’ve bought a ticket for a specific bus, you’ve bought one surely. (Not sure what happened to her – there were mutterings about a second bus, maybe she was put on that).
Our bus was called and there was a surge outside to get on it, with people mingling on the crooked, crumbling pavement with passersby – there is no ‘station’ as such, it’s just an office on the one main road, that was clearly built before the town got so busy. We managed to get our bags in the storage and boarded, only to find our path to the aisle blocked by a mulish young woman, who had booked ‘seat 1’ and someone else was in it. There were indeed 4 people sitting in the two front seats, who looked like locals and pointedly refused to budge, having no truck with this newfangled ticketing business. Another woman was trying to mediate, saying how about we all just sat down and sorted it out later. No, said Ms Mulish, SHE had booked seat 1 etc etc…
We sidled past and went further down. Of course there were people in our seats – the numbers of the seats were located on the side of the seat part, so not at all easy to see. We sat down in two others, then when the buyers of those seats turned up explained to them. They didn’t mind and went further down. There were further negotiations happening all over the bus. Eventually, one of the hapless staff members got on and started checking people’s tickets. Shock, horror, the people next to us didn’t have the same ticket as everybody else, but a different one. They’d bought it from the shop over there, they said and been told to get on the bus. No, no, said the staff member, they must get off the bus. Two people stood in the aisle looking awkward as after much more arguing the two seated people relinquished them, with murderous looks and went to have it out with whoever sold them their tickets.
The man who owns the company (I think) I spotted on the street looking haggard muttering into a phone, clearly fearing a lynch mob. And off we finally went, about 20 minutes late and with tempers frayed (not ours, as we weren’t affected, it was riveting, but I’d have been equally cross). So, while tickets ARE available in advance, it’s about as efficient as the whole Speedy Boarding/cabin bags in overhead lockers fandango on planes.
The trouble with this part of the country is that they’ve tried to rush into this big tourist scene, without understanding how to do things properly. If you’re going to sell tickets, then put the departure time down, but have that as the cutoff time, rather than 30 mins previously (and factor that into the total journey time). And only then start selling unclaimed tickets. And get those who have their tickets already to board sooner, so there’s not this mad scrum!
An enterprising local taxi man was standing at the roadside where we were dropped off, which was lucky as nothing else was there. The hotel was not far away, but the other side of the dual carriageway we were on, with no way to cross it, so he took us there for not too much money.
We relaxed once we arrived, watched England narrowly beat Switzerland on penalties in the hotel restaurant (having to keep our pleasure under wraps as we realised everyone around us was supporting the Swiss – another ‘benefit’ of Brexit in our relations with the rest of Europe), then had dinner at the hotel. Somewhat annoying, as I had to ask for a menu twice from 2 different staff, then after a further 5 minutes had passed, got up and went to get one. It wasn’t even that busy. My grilled mixed fish was on the small side for 20 Euros, especially with a load of prawn heads in it and came only with sweet chilli sauce, which was not a good pairing. And the unbothered waitress was in sudden great haste to clear the plates, while we were still eating. I walked along the excellent promenade afterwards and got us some ice creams from a little shop, feeling disinclined to give the restaurant any more money. I’d noticed other tables receiving a complimentary fruit plate, but not us.
7 July
Magnificent breakfast, with juices freshly squeezed, egg station, all manner of sweet and savoury pastries, interesting little sausages, cooked vegetables, fruits. And delightful staff (NOT the same ones as work in the restaurant in the evening) One of the other tables was occupied by a couple, the man looking remarkably like Nick Cage. Bizarrely, they were there at whatever time we went. I expect they thought the same about us. I squirreled away a couple of pastries for later. If people say they don’t do that, they’re lying.
A day of rest for us, perambulating from outdoor pool (strangely salty), to beach (beautiful and calm, albeit shallow, so you had to walk awhile to get out deep enough to swim), to small indoor pool. At each of these towels were brought by staff and umbrellas erected over one’s lounger.
I went for a little stroll through the nearby streets, stopping to watch 2 elderly gents playing dominoes and a man on the beach doing the 3 Card Monte trick. I also prowled the hotel corridors inspecting all the peculiar paintings they had up, depicting battle and derring-do, with a brave knight rescuing a woman, whose breastplate looked far too low. That evening we ate at a restaurant jutting over the sea and watched the sunset.
8 July
In the afternoon we went to the capital Tirana, about 45 minutes drive away. The hotel arranged our taxi, at an astonishingly cheap 22 Euros. We admired the buildings around Skanderberg Square, then visited the deeply affecting Bunk Art museum (under the main square), detailing the Communist atrocities post WW2 till 1990, carried out by the ‘Sigurimi’ State Police. L was somewhat overly bouncy, which is a natural displacement response to reading about death and torture, I suppose.
We needed some light relief after that, so sought out the ‘Friends’ cafe for a drink – hilariously nothing like the original excepting the name inscribed up one wall. Then a wander through some little streets, before stopping for dinner at a café. We had a sausage and a meat mixed grill. Too much meat even for Luke, who didn’t have any more meat for the next day and a half!
Then a look at the little market before finding a taxi back. We couldn’t get such a good deal, but struck a reasonably good one with a local taxi (3000 Lek, equalling about 30 Euros – it was late evening by now anyway, so understandably more expensive). It was going great guns until we got stuck in roadworks a couple of miles outside Durres. He asked if he could smoke and we sat in traffic while I watched the meter creeping up. He pointed this out grumpily, as we’d agreed a fixed price, but I gave him a bit more than we’d said, which mollified him.
9 July
After a morning spent swimming and sunning, L and I took a local bus (with a conductor with a ticket machine. 80p ticket!) into the old town. We had a nice afternoon perambulating around looking at the ancient Roman bits of architecture. We looked in some little souvenir shops and I bought myself a sweet necklace that looks a bit like the Blue Eye lagoon. We finished with savoury and sweet crepes at a beachfront cafe and a Margarita for me (If Margaret can’t have a Margarita on holiday, then it would be a pretty pass!) Bless the waitress, it took 3 times of asking for it, but we got there in the end. I think L was rather taken with the young staff cos he asked to leave a tip here for the first time.
This the last evening, so rejuvenating to step outside the grind of work (and rain!) for a brief while and spend time with my boys. We watched a bit of Spain-France at the outside bar with sitting on beanbags on the sand, most content with life.
I enjoyed Durres very much. It’s much larger and older than Saranda (which feels a bit like a toddler who’s only recently toilet trained and might wet themself). While there’s crowds, it’s better organised. And obviously this time we were in possession of hotel wristbands so could potter from beach to pool without interruption.
10 July
I went out early this morning for a last sea swim and was delighted to see all the locals out promenading in the ‘cool’ of the day (cool being already 26 degrees). We packed up, had a last monster breakfast, said goodbye to the friendly hotel staff and were whisked off in a pre-arranged taxi to the airport. The staff were also exceedingly good-looking and I realised in years gone by there’d have been a flirtation, no doubt, but being in your 50s brings invisibility as a woman, especially when accompanied by teens 😉
Stayed at Sprios’ House via Airbnb in Corfu, Sunny Bay Apartments via Booking.com in Saranda and Hotel Adriatik BW in Durres, booked by the Travel Counsellors who arranged our flights and airport transfer.