Hotel Grand Vlore

Hallo zusammen,<br><br>den heutigen Tag habe ich zu einem Ausflug nach Berat genutzt, UNESCO World Heritage Site. Die Kommunisten haben zwei Staedte, Berat und Girokastrja, zu Museumsstaedten deklariert und diese nicht zerstoert. Beide stellen heute grossartige Ensembles ottomanischer Architektur dar und sind daher beide World Heritage Sites (Girokastrja ist allerdings recht weit im Sueden und daher werde ich die Stadt nicht besuchen). <br ...

... are mired by the dirty windows and bus&#8217; speed. <br><br>We arrive in Berat around 1. Juliana is thoughtful enough to ask when the last bus leaves back. 3:00. I can&#8217;t understand how they have roughly hourly bus throughout the day but stop at 3:00. We only have 2 hours.<br><br>The primary site is the fortress at the top of the hill. We walk that way, picking up a rotisserie chicken and snacks along the way. The outside is not ...

... is another little ripper with amazing views of the valley from its back deck. I&#8217;m out there right now and its so peaceful. I wish I had some more time in this region as I am rushing through it madly at the moment but now that I am out of the madness that is the Adriatic coast I am feeling more and more settled on the road. Tomorrow I think I will head into Macedonia to see Lake Ohrid and after that it will either be a crazy stint in Corfu Greece or some travel through Bulgaria.

... choose to sit by the roadside cafes and watch, but not the women. I guess since they are the main attraction of the show, they have no rest.<br><br>As soon as I entered the countryside, I started to notice the concrete bunkers. Mostly they are in pairs by the roadsides; each of them is small and has a round top, look a bit like an oversized mushroom. After seeing so many of them, I decided to find out what kind of deal they are, and discovered an entertaining story ...

... with Scott, we helped him lay out placement for framed pictures throughout the hostel, paint his common room bar, hang fabric from the ceiling, get a sense of the bus schedule for arrivals, and any other little thing he needed doing. <br><br>This way, we were able to stay in a cool place, work a few hours a day, and get room and board in return. My favorite thing about Berat was how ...

... been there for a long time on the hills where a river passes through. The backpackers I am staying at is brand new and they are still doing it up. That is one thing about Macedonia and Albania all the backpackers are just starting up in the past year as there has hardly been any backpackers come this way before. In a few years time there will be lots of backpackers coming through this way so it is ...

... and in summer it offers a very pleasant cool climate. In this zone the meat of lamb and young goats(kid) are prepared in a original unique manner called(mish helli) in Albanian and has a very special taste. The road from Vlora to Saranda is a wonderful trip to be made. This place is called Riviera and it offers a view to the sea and the mountains are cute. This road is not very wide and not in very good ...

... direction as me today, so we went ahead and made it a group effort. It seemed to help doing it that way, not just for the reduced taxi fare per head, but also because it got the furgon packed with people in no time flat. Instead of waiting for an hour and a half like yesterday, we were off in a mere five or ten minutes. Today's journey brought me to the small city of Berati, southwards from Tirana a few hours. The trip was relatively quick, with enough interesting ...

... white city"), from which the present name is derived. on 18 September 1385 the notable Battle of Saurian Field occurred in front of Berat, on which the Ottomans defeated the Serb forces under Balsa II Balsiæ and Ivanis Mrnjavèeviæ. The Ottoman Empire conquered it in 1450 and retained it until 1912. However, it did not retain direct control for the whole of this period - in 1809, the tyrannical Ali Pasha, who was himself of Albanian origins, seized the ...

... hugtging and kissing me on the cheek and at one point even grabbing my thigh. Unfortunately I never managed to catch his name. None of them spoke English, so we communicated in a neutral language that we didn't speak either, Italian. A long-haied Mediterranean type was talking to us about his family in Florence over and over again, then he began to vomit on the floor, so we made our excuses and left. Earlier in ...