A holiday from our holiday

For the first time, Albania. Neither of us has ever been, and we are both excited. It is a first on this trip, for both of us a brand new country.

And we are having to leave Dora behind. Our motorhome insurance doesn’t stretch to Albania. In some ways the UK is a third world country; Germans and the French can happily drive around Albania in their motorhomes, not those who buy their insurance in Great Britain, here we have the old empire mentality, it used to be communist therefore you ain’t going.

Greece was never on the agenda, but because of this lack of research we altered our plans, and are we glad we did. We have thoroughly enjoyed Greece, and not to be put off by our insurers we will leave Dora in the trusted hands of Panos Nikiforos who has a small car park in Ioannina and assures us she will be OK. From there we will spend the next week on public transport, transport that used to be communist. We will stay in hotels and hostels and we will eat in restaurants and have picnics. For the next week we are having a holiday from our holiday!

Last night we stayed next to one of those delightful stone bridges. The bus left at 13.30 and Ioannina was just an hour away, so plenty of time to drive back, pack up our stuff for a week, park and walk to the bus station.

The coaches here are pretty good. At first we thought we would have to get one to the border, then change, and a long journey to Berat, but actually there is a direct bus to Gjirokaster, and it sounds like a cool little town, deep in the south of Albania and only a couple of hours from Ioannina.

The bus leaves on time and is only half full.

After about an hour we reach the border. Old school security checks, everyone off the bus. We are the only tourists, the rest are either Greeks or Albanians, but we are all leaving the EU, so stamps in passports and police searching luggage.

We are soon back on the bus and heading down a beautiful valley, hills either side. It is pretty, but really dirty, litter lays on every verge and every river bank, very sad.

It isn’t long before we are approaching Gjirokaster, we are really excited. What is it going to be like? Are the people going to be friendly?

Our guide says most people speak a little English. This is our first realisation, no they don’t, well not here in the south. They may speak a little Italian, but no Spanish and no English. We are just going to have to shout!

We have come into the new part of town that sits at the bottom of a hill. We throw our rucksacks onto our backs, and head up the hill towards the old town and where we hope our accommodation will be. We are booking stuff online a couple of days before arrival, we are loving booking.com.

A couple of helpful locals point us in the right direction and before long we have found our guesthouse. We booked the last room that was available. We think we know why. It was the only room they had. It is massive, has many timber features including a coffered timber ceiling and takes ten minutes to walk one end to the other. A bit of an exaggeration, but it is lovely, and at €20 a steal. This holiday from holidays might still come just within budget.

We are sharing the bathroom however, with the couple that live here. He is a little OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and is perpetually cleaning the floors. He has six pairs of sandals; one for outside, one for the living, one for the stairs etc. Most amusing, but maybe in need of a little therapy.

We head out to explore the town, we only have one night here and tomorrow we will be off early.

There are many decaying buildings around.

And this one is so flimsy, it is amazing it still stands up, simply lathes of timber that have been rendered, and it appears to be still occupied

The town centre is less decrepit, with lots of locals milling around. There are a few tourists, but not that many.

We stop for a drink and Susana grapples with the new currency, the Leke. There are 140 leke to the euro (190 to the pound) a beer is 100, this is going to be a cheap week!

High above us stands the castle, we will drag ourselves up there later on. In the meantime we peruse the Albania equivalent of a tat shop. They really don’t know how to do it at all, some nice handmade slippers and other locally produced handicraft.

These people are so ignorant, what tourists want is useless fridge magnets and gaudy ceramics. This has been a complete waste of time. We buy two trekking maps and leave in disgust!

The maps are for the north of the country where we hope to do some walking.

The town square could be in any part of Europe.

Beautiful views across the valley.

Before the castle we head up, out of town to a restored house

These Ottoman buildings are very famous here. With these deep roof overhangs propped up by timber struts.

They are quite tall and elegant.

It is 200 leke to visit the house, but no one to take the money, just a women doing her dishes in the kitchen next door.

We are the only visitors as we head up through the building it is quite difficult to determine what each room was used for.

Some have been furnished with carpets and cushions around the edges. The stained windows and overhanging roofs give the rooms a cool and calm feel.

The dark timber panelling copies that of our room, or maybe it was the other way around!

This room is higher up the building, is lighter and more airy.

It also has more decoration. Did many families occupy these buildings, or just one?

Out on the balcony a raised bed, where you could sleep out in the open on a warm summer night.

We like this feature. Perhaps we would include this design in our next house in Spain. The perfect room to sleep in the hot summer Spanish nights SM.

What we didn’t capture was the small raised platforms in every room accessed via little loft ladders, again probably little bed areas.

Quite stunning but would have liked to understand a little bit more about the house.

Some of the other properties have had less restoration.

Little allotments still litter the town. It must be quite hard work to maintain them by hand.

There are many of these ottoman houses across the village and only a few have been saved.

Next stop the castle.

Which contains an abstract collection of German and Italian tanks which were captured during WW2.

You can just about see the barrels pocking out from the eeriness.

Great views down the town below, and we love the Albania flag with the black double headed eagle.

The roofs are very similar to those in Zagori.

They also captured an American spy plane. Actually I don’t think it was spying, more like on a training flight and the pilot got lost and then had a mechanical failure. They kept the plane, but returned the pilot. This was back in the communist days.

They are doing quite a lot of renovation to the castle at the moment but you could probably put these signs up over much of the town.

You would never come across anything like this western Europe. Cables, piles of bricks, tractors carrying tones of materials are all over the place. No warns for the visitors beforehand, in case you decide not to come in. They still need fees entrances. SM.

The landscaper had just finished mowing the pitched roof, no seriously he mowed the roof, no harness either, life is also cheap here.

At least mowing the flat roof should be safer

The other thing we will be having a holiday from is writing blogs as we have not brought the computers along with us, we just have the phone and the tablet. We have built up a nice Surplus of blogs though, so hopefully we will be able to post almost every day.

We head back into town for a nice shower. This is another luxury for us. Dora’s shower is a little cramped so to have a little bit of extra space is really nice.

There is very little evidence of what you might conceive as communist, except a few monuments.

Another one of those Ottoman type houses, I think they are going to be a really feature around here.

That evening we have a lovely meal, although in all honesty we order too much and get really stuffed.

Fried mussels with side orders of rice balls mixed with herbs, almost subtle Indian flavour, very nice. We also had pastries filled with spinach and cheese. All very excellent.

Up early tomorrow for the next bus to Berat.

GDR