As a welcome break from my convenience store cuisine, my current innkeeper Flora has been popping over every day or two with a home cooked meal, with a plethora of veggies from her garden and plenty of the olive oil she tapped from her olive trees. The downside to these gifts is I always get…
Saranda – Convenience Store Cuisine
I’ve been rotating between the tiny market down the road to get cold drinks with the “Your Market” convenience store a short uphill hike from the apartment and the longer trek up and down “Mt Everest” near the water. It’s been raining in Saranda and the road and cobblestone sidewalks were slicker than I liked,…
Corfu, Greece
Corfu, Greece is just a short ferry ride from Sarande’s promenade, so I decided on a quick day trip. There were two options, a “fast” ferry at 35 minutes and a “slow” ferry that took about an hour. Which one you go on depends less on price (fast is 10 euro more) and more on…
What goes down must go back up – First day exploring Sarande
Last night was my first full night (4 hours) of uninterrupted sleep since I left Seattle. Flora’s house is super quiet after the last call to prayer from the Mosque one street above at 9pm and the barking dogs have settled down. The two balcony doors have screens and the apartment was my ideal sleeping…
Tirana to Sarande – Albania buses are fun but finding a random address for a homestay is NOT.
Albania doesn’t have Uber or Bolt, or any of the other ride services where you can get a quote for your ride BEFORE you get in the car. I’m sure there are honorable and honest taxi drivers, I just never seem to meet them. In Tirana, there is a taxi stand right outside the airport…
Travel Day: Split to Tirana – Birthday Blunders and Chocolate Styrofoam Surprises
I usually don’t do anything too taxing on my birthday. I consider it a personal holiday and tend to avoid work or anything too regimented. It just so happened that the apartment I had rented in Split wasn’t available through May 10th, so I went ahead and booked my travel to Albania, figuring travel is…
Hvar, Croatia – Speedboating through islands near Split
I’m a slow mover on the water – wooden canoes, paddleboards, and sailboats with the sail down rocking gently on the surface, are my perfect speed. I’d debated for over three weeks about visiting Hvar because there were only two options: A ferry/catamaran that was relatively expensive for a 45 minute trip or the only…
Dubrovnik, Croatia – Pennywise but pound foolish – Part 2
For those of you who are Game of Thrones fans, I am providing my friend Jenny’s pictures of Dubrovnik, taken on her 12 hour tour with no hiccups. She did say that it was a pretty brutal day and it cost 40 Euros cash to climb to the top of the wall for many of…
Dubrovnik, Croatia – Pennywise but pound foolish – Part 1
As a general rule, I will always choose my own transportation over taking a guided bus tour, if for no other reason as I like to manage my own time. The Plitvice tour I went on Sunday was at a much faster pace, and a lot more physical, than I had planned on. In the…
Plitvice National Park, Croatia – Hundreds of waterfalls amongst miles of steps
The bus was packed on a Sunday for this national park, which is one of the most visited in this part of Europe. In order to ensure the beauty stays for this generation as well as the future, there is an incredibly strict policy that visitors are not to touch anything off the path, not…