A frustrating day

Trip Start May 06, 2007
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Trip End Jul 24, 2008


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Flag of Albania  ,
Sunday, December 16, 2007

I arrived in Vlore to discover that there were no buses to Sarande or Gjirokaster, a nearby city, that afternoon.  Supposedly there would be a bus the next morning, but no one could tell me what time it was at.  It was a very frustrating experience.  It took me awhile to find a hotel to stay at that night - they all seemed geared to the business traveler and charged around 50 Euro a night - a bit steep for my budget.  After close to two hours of walking around with my pack I finally found a place for 25 Euro.  Another frustrating experience.

Vlore doesn't really have anything to see and I originally had no intention of stopping there.  There's a port, a couple of statues, and a couple of mosques, but none of them are very exciting.  There were also more power outages.  During the power outages, most of the restaurants and cafes have generators so they can remain open, but most other places just deal with the dark.  I spent some time in an internet cafe and then figured I'd head to a regular cafe to drink hot chocolate while reading.  While I was technically able to accomplish this, it was a rather weird experience.  Once the sun sets in Albania, cafes, bars, clubs, and pretty much everywhere except for restaurants become men-only establishments.  I was not only subject to a lot of stares while sitting in the cafe reading, I also received repeated dirty looks from all of the men there and anyone who happened to pass by.  I quickly finished my hot chocolate, paid, and returned to the safety of my hotel room where no one could give me dirty looks or stare at me.

The next morning I woke up very early to make sure I wouldn't miss the bus heading south.  At 6:30am I boarded a furgon, the Albanian equivalent of a mini-bus, heading to Gjirokaster, only a couple of hours north of Sarande.  All of the Albanian landscape that I had encountered thus far had been rather dull and boring, but this ride was different.  We passed by tree-lined rivers where there were still fall colors on some of the trees with mossy green hills nearby and snow-covered mountains in the distance.  I actually started to think that Albania did have some beautiful places in it.
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