Day trip to Albania

Because I sailled passed Albania with Madame Curie,  I decided to book a day trip to Albania to get the Albanian feeling. The distance between Albania and Corfu is just 1.2 nautical miles at the nearest point. I visited two sites in Albania, the historical site of Butrint, and the coastal city of Saranda. The first thing I noticed in Albania was that it is really green. There are trees all over the place, and meadows, swamplands, and I even so some grazing cows! This is a huge difference compared to Croatia and Montenegro, these countries were rather dry, and did not have the lovely large green trees.

The ruines of Butrint were surrounded by the lush green. I was happy there were so many trees, because it was 35 degrees, very sunny, so I welcomed the shade the trees provided. Butrint is a city that was started somewere 200 BC, and has had several major refits during history. The last major changes were around the 14th century, while under Venetian rule. The construction methods for the walls changed over time, and these differences are still very well visible.

Various styles of wall building.

The entire site of Butrint is surrounded by a fresh water irrigation system. There was a lot of life in this water, insects, bugs, but also turtles.

I don't want to know how many mosquitos they are cultivating here.

And of course there were the traditional buildings, fortifications, churches and roman baths.

Basilica

Fort on the hill top.

Afterward we travelld by bus to Saranda. The road is not completely finished, and they have just started constructing it last year. Nor completely finished means there are still patches of gravel road inbetween the asphalt. Saranda is a very depressing coastal city. The Albanese people want to turn it into a florishing tourist area, and because of this they have started constructing the road to there main tourist site Butrint. To have a place to keep these tourists, they have started to build many hotels. They are lacking resources, so there are only skeletons of hotels at the moment. They are all going to be 3 star hotels, without swimming pools. The beach near Saranda is very petite, so were these thousands of tourist should go is unclear to me. Apparantly there is some sort of bigger plan, and all buildings that don't fit into this plan are being demolished by the gouvernment. So while driving through Saranda, you only see collapsed buildings and hotels in every (early) fase of construction. Depressing.

The collapsed building is destroyed on purpose.

Very depressing, I don't see how they will be able to attract many tourists here, even though the prices are very cheap.

Hotels along the shoreside of Saranda.

But what I really liked is that the Albanians are proud to be Albanian. There were many Albanian flags on various buildings. And when  I asked an owner of a pastery shop why he came back to Albania after working in Greece for 8 years (where he made a lot more money), all he could answer was: " but look around, this is my country".