Greece and Albania

[Preface: The following journal writing of an almost three week journey in Korfu Island Greece and Sarande Albania in the Summer of 2012, is presented here completely unedited, as it is written directly from my Fifth journal book. It is [42.5] hand written pages.]

   How to start? Where to start? It's ten days into July, Elin and I are in Greece on the island of Korfu - this entire area as a whole is called Kerkyra.

   We started out with looking into going to India, that turned into Afrika - Zambia, then Turkey, even going back to other parts of Asia, yet - now, here we are in Greece, and we also plan to take a ferry over to Albania. We have just about three weeks. The flight was three and a half hours. We left Gardermoen - Oslo very late on a Monday night. In fact our flight got delayed. We arrived in Korfu around 4AM, the Bella Vista Beach hotel, where we had booked a studio apartment, arranged for a taxi to pick us up at the airport. The taxi cost 25 Euros. It was around 5AM by the time we checked in and went to sleep. We only slept for four hours or so, we got up a short while after 9AM - the breakfast at the hotel was done at 10AM and we wanted to eat. The breakfast was amazing, everything was fresh - the juice, fruit - two kinds of melon, a spread of feta cheese, cucumber and tomato, yoghurt with honey, bruschetta (toasted bread with oregano and feta and tomato). After breakfast we walked across the road to the beach. In the early afternoon heat of the Mediterranean sun we walked a couple of blocks up and down in each direction from the hotel - along the narrow street that seemed to be the main avenue. The passing cars went by fast - almost a bit sketchy, the sidewalks were almost non-existent - when there were sidewalks they were very narrow and a lot of the time very short. We went to a small grocery store and bought four cans of Greek beer, ate lunch at a real cool sidewalk - patio style restaurant, I snapped a few photos of the street scene, the buildings were very run down, almost falling apart, old, abandoned, bars and restaurants shut down - out of business, windows boarded up and covered with old newspapers, empty. We were in a village called Benitses. The backdrop was a scene of beautiful landscape of mountains, luscious green with cypress trees, we could see a few small houses far up on the mountain sides and what also looked to be (possibly the ruins) an old church. The studio apartment we had at Bella Vista was on the second floor, we had a nice cozy balcony that over looked a small garden, there was also the dried out ditch - remains of some sort of creek river or drainage ditch, there was a dusty dirt pathway along side that led up the mountain side - with an old rickety make shift wood plank bridge. One late afternoon as Elin and I sat on the balcony drinking beer, three sheep came down that dusty pathway from the mountain to graze.

   We rented a scooter for two days - the first day we had the scooter we headed from Benitses to the sand beach of Issos, about a half an hour South and along the other coastline of the island. The beach at Issos was amazing - the better one of the beaches. Issos was a sand beach - the other beaches we went to on Korfu were small stones and rocks. But no matter - the water at all the beaches was perfect, amazingly clear, with crystal green-blue tone. On the way out of Issos we stopped off at a café that looked so perfect, idealic Greek, with an old house, an outside brick oven, a garden shaded with trees, but the food turned out to be real bad. The bread was old - stale and molded, the meat of the soulvaki that Elin ate looked gray and was fatty - even had a bone left in it, I wanted vegetarian moussaka but the old man said they were out of the ingredients to make it. So I ordered a veggie pizza - which turned out to be just a frozen cheese pizza in which they just added oregano, green pepper, onion, and tomato to try and "dress" it up. Some of the pizza was still cold. Along the coast main road riding back to Benitses we noticed areas where the waters were even more clear, with that beautiful Mediterranean green-blue, we found a spot to park the scooter on the side of the road near an almost hidden pathway that Elin spotted. The stone beach area was real small but quite secluded and private - Elin and I had this spot completely to ourselves. It was so refreshing to stop along the way back to Benitses and take a dip to cool off. Later that day, in the early evening we hopped back on the scooter and headed into the main town of Korfu City. We walked the sidewalk by a main avenue along the sea, we took a few photos. The sun was starting to set. On the ride back to Benitses, I missed a left turn I needed to stay on the main coastline road, and we ended up taking a road that led us far up into a mountain, on a very beautiful scenic route - through an old, truly idealic, traditional looking Greek village. We had no idea where we were, or if we were severely lost, until we ended up seeing a few signs for Benitses village, so we figured out we were good. We came down off the mountain just less than one kilometer from Benitses. That night back in Benitses we went to dinner at a restaurant (I think it was called Aquarius) that was about a block away from the Bella Vista. Elin had moussaka - which she said was fantastic, and I had a plate of grilled vegetables - of eggplant, squash, tomatoes, and mushrooms with balsamic vinegar and feta cheese. The veggies were real fresh, organic, so very flavorful - sun drenched. I have never had grilled veggies so good. We also shared a small plate of saganaki - fried cheese. Aquarius became our favorite restaurant in Benitses, we ate there for lunch and dinner our last day on Korfu - ate there a total of three times - always having the fried cheese - (Elin also had soulvaki, we shared a fresh Greek salad, I had grilled mushrooms with garlic, and eggplant with cheeses - which was the cheeses in a tomato sauce - it was amazingly good.) Our last full day on Korfu was a Thursday. We chose to really relax and take it easy for the late morning/early afternoon, there was a swimming pool that Bella Vista shared with another hotel, it cost 2 Euros per person or if you bought something from the bar so we bought a couple of beers. We hung out at the pool for a few hours. For lunch that's when we ate at Aquarius the second time. Later in the afternoon we took the scooter back to that small secluded stone beach we found the day before. We were really looking forward to having that spot to ourselves again, but when we got there we saw a few cars parked along the road and we could hear voices (and kids) down on the beach. We ended up beach hopping along that coast road - hitting a few other small stone beach areas - unfortunately not finding one where we could be alone, but the waters were always amazing. In the evening it was another adventure back off on the scooter. We headed back up that winding scenic mountain road to the small Greek village we found - our second day on Korfu, a Wednesday in July, first day with the scooter, became our day of little Greek discovery. We parked the scooter, walked the narrow mountain village streets, the village was so very quiet, it was beautiful - all the landscape, the old house, old run down abandoned buildings, a couple of old bar/restaurants, the old church with it's bell tower...we took photos. We had planned to eat dinner that - our last night on Korfu in one of the small restaurants there in that mountain village, but it seemed like tourists didn't come up the mountain much to the village, and the places seemed empty of anyone. We thought about that spot in Issos and how the food ended up being terrible, so we went back into Benitses, back to Aquarius for the third time. 

   Friday morning we got up around 7AM, finished up packing our small suitcases, we were checking out of the Bella Vista and leaving the island of Korfu Greece, we ate breakfast, the taxi was to pick us up at 8AM to take us to the port so we could catch the ferry to Albania - to Sarande. We got to the port about twenty minutes after 8AM. We told our taxi driver to take us to a ticket sales agent, we needed to buy the ferry tickets, he ignored us and took us straight to the port building, to the ferry. The passport check-in line was very long and some girl in front of us told us we couldn't buy the tickets there and we needed to have the tickets to get our passports stamped - to get on the ferry. I asked another taxi driver if he could drive me to the ticket agent, he refused, telling me it was too close and that I could walk there. Time was real short. I started to run like hell. I spotted a building with a row of ticket sales offices but they were only doing ticket sales for domestic cruises. It turned out the office I needed was outside of the port gates, across the street and up a block. One of the sales guys grabbed the key to his collegue's scooter, I jumped on the back and he took off fast, taking me to the sales office I needed. Of course there was a bit of a long line at that sales office but I had no choice, I had to wait it out and get our tickets for the ferry. There were only two people working in the office - it seemed like the woman was doing all of the work, and the other guy - who looked like a Greek Hunter Thompson - seemed to be just grumbling and complaining about whatever, he didn't help anyone. Finally I got the ferry tickets and ran out of the sales office, I really did not expect the guy with the scooter to be waiting for me but he was. As I ran up, he started to drive off slowly - and like a scene from a movie, but yes this really happened - I jumped back onto the back of the scooter as he was rolling, and fast as hell off he sped to take me back to the port building to meet back up with Elin. It was ten minutes before 9AM, and the ferry was scheduled to leave at 9, we had made it just in time. The ferry from Korfu to Sarande took about forty minutes. As we waited in the morning Mediterranean heat, in line to get through passport control at the port, there was this pushy - insistent taxi driver standing on the other side of the fence asking if anyone needed a taxi. After we got through passport control we were standing on the sidewalk trying to figure out our next move - we needed a taxi to the Hotel Dea where we tried to book a room online but the payment didn't go through, we weren't even sure if we would be able to get a room there, and we wanted to get to an A.T.M. to take out money in Albanian Lek - we only had Euros on us - (it turned out we could also use the Euros in Albania, though we didn't. We used the Lek.) So as we were standing there on the sidewalk, that same pushy - insistent taxi driver that was at the fence walked up to us. He asked me where I was from - I got a bit sketched out. His name was Maksim - he gave Elin his business card. He got excited when he found out I was American. Apparently - and it did become evident - Albanians do love America. Along the streets, at businesses, hotels, bars and restaurants I saw Albanian, European Union and American flags flying all next to each other in a row. Our taxi driver Maksim even had a small American flag stuck in a holder on his dashboard. His taxi was an old beat up dusty Mercedes and he drove like a complete maniac. We got to the Hotel Dea late morning on a Friday, since we had problems booking the room online they didn't have our reservation or a room ready for us. We set our luggage in the lobby and sat in the patio café poolside drinking iced coffees. The front of the Dea was done up quite beautiful and cozy - with palm trees, the pool was big and it was a salt water pool - they pumped in the fresh sea water straight from the Ionian sea and once a month they drained it and added in fresh new sea water, the patio café was also very cozy. As we waited for a room to be cleaned and ready for us, we met this guy named Erion who looked like he could've been twins with Mickey - my best friend and old room mate back in Florida. Erion was from Albania - from a village not so far from Sarande, but he now lived in England outside of London, his wife Patricia was from Poland. Erion told us that an old friend of his (who now lives in Belgium) owned the Hotel Dea, and he seemed to know the three young guys working at the Dea quite well. They didn't have a room with a double bed available so we got a room with two twin beds - pushed together. At first look, the room seemed very nice but it turned out to not be so good. And where to start with this one...in the bathroom the water pressure and hot water was terrible, the water wouldn't stay hot for too long, the bed sheets had stains and small holes, the pillows stank of old sweat, the air conditioner didn't work, we had no patio furniture on the balcony, most of the light bulbs in the lamps - in the bathroom were burned out, the T.V. didn't work, and the shower was just like how the bathrooms and showers were in Asia - the whole bathroom and shower was one, all open space with a drain in the floor. When we showered the water wouldn't go down the drain properly so the bathroom floor stayed soaking wet and got pretty nasty. We got ourselves situated in the room, changed into our swimsuits, and went down to the patio bar and pool area. We got a couple of beers, took a dip in the pool, and met back up with Erion and Patricia. They told us there was a good beach spot a few blocks up the street - about a ten minute walk, so the four of us went there. This beach spot was called Mango Beach. We only stayed there for about an hour or so. It was a large stone and rock beach - similar to Greece, but the water was amazing, better. We went back to the Dea for lunch. Eating at that cozy patio poolside restaurant at the Dea was good, but it also became quite frustrating because they did not have or offer a menu. They really did make everything fresh and from scratch - (well, most everything), so you could pretty much order anything you wanted - but it also became limited. If they were out of something, they would go to a market to get it right away. Yet, this also meant that a lot of the time we had to wait quite some time for our dinners.

   (In both Korfu, Greece and Sarande, Albania - more so in Albania - the food, especially the vegetables were the most fresh sun ripe flavorful, and fully organic I have ever eaten. All fresh and organic. Greek salads, feta cheese, fried cheese: saganaki, eggplant, sweet onion, tomatoes, green peppers, homemade French fries - and not over fried or too greasy either, grilled corn on the cob, the best olive oil and vinegar for dressing.) So, for lunch and dinner that first day in Sarande I had grilled veggies - squash, eggplant, sweet onion in balsamic vinegar, with a Greek salad. And after eating basically the same for a few days in Korfu, then twice in one day in Sarande - yea, it got tiresome, no matter how fresh. The rest of that Friday we lounged by the pool and drank beer. When the evening came on and the sun started to set and the air cooled down a bit, the breezes started to pick up so we thought we would be OK sleeping that night with no A.C. and just having the window and balcony door open. Unfortunately swarms of very small mosquitos came out and after the sun was completely gone and it was dark, the cooling breezes died out and the night air got still and hot again. Elin and I didn't sleep so good that night. I think it was some time around 9AM when we got up on Saturday morn - first thing we did was take cold showers, breakfast was iced coffees, eggs - omelet, feta cheese, tomato, and toast - which I made a breakfast sandwich. As Elin and I were finishing up our breakfast, Eion and Patricia came down to start theirs. The four of us had planned to go see the ruins of the old historic city of Butrint, then go to the beach at Ksamil. Maksim, the maniac taxi driver from the day before, told us that he would be our driver for the day and pick us up at 10AM. The morning was a bit hectic - (the other) Erion who runs the Dea, switched us to the room directly across from our old room. Our new room was a little smaller, but it had a working air conditioner that actually looked new, a full double bed, chairs on the balcony, yet there were still again blown out light bulbs in the lamps and bathroom, the T.V. didn't work, and the water pressure was even worse - it would just trickle out, and not much for hot water either. It was a few minutes after 10AM, Elin and I were getting ready to leave, Erion from the Dea knocked on our door to let us know that our taxi driver, Maksim was downstairs waiting for us. Elin and I knew it - that he would be dead on time, but we kind of hoped he would've forgotten. When we went downstairs Maksim was already sitting and talking with Erion and Patricia while they finished eating their breakfast. On the ride to Butrint Maksim was of course driving so crazy and bad. We kept telling him to slow down, that we were in no rush, but he just wouldn't listen. He sort of finally got it when Patricia snapped at him, telling him we wanted to get to Butrint safe, not dead. When we did get to Butrint, Erion told him to leave and not wait for us. From Butrint we took a bus to the beach at Ksamil. The four of us spent most of the Saturday afternoon at the beach, drinking beer, we ate lunch at a patio beach side restaurant. We had to take the bus back to Sarande, the buses are suppose to run every hour on the hour and there are no actual bus stops - you just stand on the sidewalk, wait for the bus to come and wave - flagging the bus to stop. By the clock, we had about forty-five minutes to wait till the next bus. We ended up getting lucky, some guy driving a mini-bus - (van) came along, saw us standing on the sidewalk, Erion told him we needed to get back to Sarande. Along the way he picked up two more guys who needed to get back to Sarande as well. The two young guys were cousins from Cosovo, but one of them now lived in Switzerland. Saturday night - Elin and I decided to make the twenty minute walk down into the center town area of Sarande to go out for dinner. Within about a block or so from the hotel, along the main road, a passing taxi slowed down - almost pulling over, the driver tapped the horn a couple of times - it was that maniac Maksim. Elin and I ignored him and kept walking, he finally took the hint and drove off. In the city center of Sarande, we walked the promenade - stone style boardwalk along the sea, there was a man-made beach area along the way - I thought it was cool they made the beach area in the city center, all along the walk there were popcorn vendors, of course lots of bars, not much for restaurants - but quite a few pizza places with old school style brick - wood fire ovens. As we walked through the crowd, a very young Gypsy-type girl stepped right into my path with her hands held out to beg, I told her no and kept walking by - as we walked on, Elin asked me if I had seen the whole scenario - I had not, Elin saw this - just before that girl stepped in front of me to beg, her own father slapped her across the face to make her beg more - to keep her begging. Later on, at dinner at one of the pizza places that same young Gypsy-type girl came up behind me begging for food, again I told her no except when I said no - in some kind of auto-response, I said it in Norsk so what I actually said was nei, and the strange thing that happened - she replied back to me in Norsk saying, jeg trenger a spise. - I need to eat. She had picked up on that I spoke Norsk. Elin didn't catch on to that. After dinner when I told Elin - she was surprised - at what the Gypsy and begger types teach their kids and what they know. When the incident happened at the restaurant, our waiter confronted the girl, telling her to leave, she refused to go, it took the waiter a minute or two to get the girl out of the restaurant - it caused a small scene. On Sunday we didn't have an exact set plan of anything to do, we knew we wanted to go see the place called Blue Eye - it's a natural spring up in the mountains, the water is fresh ten degrees celsius, an amazing pure blue. The spring is more than fifty meters deep but no one actually really knows how deep it truly is, divers have never been able to reach the actual bottom due to the pressure of the spring. Elin and I asked Erion and Patricia if they wanted to share a taxi and go with us but they said no, because they were leaving that afternoon around 5PM - taking a ferry to Italy. They were going to Italy to see some family, then back to England. Elin and I started walking down the main road towards the city center to find a taxi and go to Blue Eye. Right as we hailed a taxi and started to negotiate a price, Erion came walking up - he needed to go into town to get the ferry tickets and other stuff for going to Italy, so he rode with us and got dropped off in town. We paid 4,000 Lek for the taxi - round trip to Blue Eye and back to the Dea, it was 200 Lek to get into the national park where Blue Eye is - the taxi driver offered to pay that. Blue Eye was phenomenal, so beautiful, there were shade trees everywhere, the water of the spring and the river was an amazing shade of blue I had never seen anything like it. There was a short pathway that led up to a viewing platform that was about fifteen feet right above the actual blue eye of the spring. Some kid there was jumping from the platform into the spring, Elin and I did take a dip in the spring - it was the most refreshing fresh water I have ever been in. It was very cold - ten degrees celsius. Our whole bodies - but mostly our legs and feet were quite sore, with that type of pins and needles feeling. Apparently - I learned it's some what of a fountain of youth legend, and you're suppose to drink from it. (For me personally - when I dipped twice in Blue Eye something happened in me. On a spiritual level. I had never felt so refreshed in my life. I only went in those two times, and I kind of wished I would have gone in more even though it was so cold, and I didn't want to leave either.) - I thought about it on the taxi ride back to the Dea, maybe only going in the Blue Eye twice was a good thing, the right amount - not over done, to lose out on that feeling, to spoil a good thing. When we got back to the Dea and I went to get out of the taxi - when I opened the door, it stuck somehow on something and the bottom part of the door panel exploded off, the small round speaker fell out along with some loose wires, an empty wallet, and a bunch of other random debris - I felt real bad about it, the old man taxi driver just shook his head, he got irritated and ticked off, I kept apologizing and he did smile and shake my hand, yet he still shook his head with frustration. He really wasn't happy. We were only suppose to pay him 4,000 Lek for the trip, I handed him a 5,000 Lek bill and he said he didn't have the 1,000 in change, so with feeling bad about the door panel breaking I told him not to worry about the change, to just keep the 5,000 Lek. It turned out - both Erions, two other old Albanians, and a few of the guests at the Dea had seen the whole incident. I had also found out that both Maksim, and the old man taxi driver Elin and I had that Sunday were kind of well known around Sarande as two of the worst taxis to go with - in both aspects of being bad drivers and having (Mercedes) taxis that are basically falling apart, especially for Maksim. I ended up hearing some stories and things about that guy - that he's a little messed up in the head. So after all that, Elin and I decided no more taxis on this trip.

   For Monday Elin and I decided we would really just take it easy and sit by the pool, and hit up the beach. We went down and discovered that Erion was working on the monthly drain and clean of the pool - also getting ready to re-fill with fresh Ionian sea water. So we spent most of the day at Mango Beach where Erion and Patricia took us the first day. While hanging out at Mango Beach we met these five young guys from Greece and other parts of Albania - I never got their names, they invited us to walk out on the breaker rocks with them to smoke a joint of Albanian weed, Elin stayed on the beach tanning, I went with them. Out on the breaker rocks - when the first joint was done they rolled a second, only a couple of them could speak English, they took photos and invited me to be in the shots, they loved basketball and wanted to talk about it, one of them told me he had met a girl from Texas and he said she was so beautiful that he fell in love with her. That night Elin felt a bit sick, she had gotten a bit too much sun exposure, she was burned out. Sun fever. We thought about checking out of the Dea Tuesday morning and finding a bus to go an hour or so up the coast to Dhermi, but she was still feeling pretty sick so we stayed in Sarande at the Dea. The pool was re-filled by late in the afternoon that Tuesday. We sat in the shade by the pool, we met up with these two other couples that we had met earlier in the weekend. Both couples lived in Manchester, England, the two guys were uncle and nephew originally from Cosovo - Valli was the uncle and Bex was the nephew. Valli's wife Abbey was from England, and Bex's girlfriend Raja was from Helsingborg, Sweden. The four of them were leaving Wednesday for Cosovo for a wedding. Valli and Abbey had driven from the U.K. - it took them three days. Bex and Raja did what Elin and I did - flew to Korfu and took the ferry over. They said it was going to take about eight hours to drive to where in Cosovo they were headed. Elin and I decided to check out of the Dea on Wednesday morning. We still stayed in Sarande, just switching hotels moving down the street more closer to the center. This hotel was called the Maestral. It only cost us 10 Euros more per night than at the Dea. The room was bigger and cleaner, the A.C. worked, we didn't have a pool at the Maestral but our balcony had an amazing sea view and there was a private beach area for the hotel, still no proper working T.V., we had a small refrigerator, and the water pressure and the hot water seemed to be a lot better - although I did have a problem that Wednesday morning after we checked in, we had bought laundry soap powder to wash clothes in the bathroom sink, Elin washed a bunch of her stuff, then when I went to brush my teeth there was no water at all - in the sink or the shower. I did get pretty irritated but the water pressure did return, it took some time though. Now that we were closer to the city center - that afternoon we walked around more of Sarande, we found the bus station and made arrangements to take a bus North to Dhermi on Thursday - just for the day. The bus goes at 11:30AM and costs 700 Lek per person and it's suppose to take about an hour or so. Wednesday night we went to dinner at an Italian place called Demi, it was a patio restaurant right on the water and there was this trendy beach bar spot called Orange that was next to Demi that was blasting loud crappy Euro Techno dance shit, now across the waters of the small bay - on the other side of Sarande, in the city was a Mosque and we could just faintly hear the prayer chanting from the Mosque, across the bay, and under the loud music from Orange bar. We woke up late morning on Thursday and decided not to take the bus to Dhermi. We stayed in Sarande hanging out at the beach area at our hotel - Maestral. On Friday, on a spur of the moment - last minute decision we checked out of the Maestral in the afternoon some time between one and two PM, rented a car - a small four door Fiat Punto, and left Sarande heading North with the thought of going the 120 kilometers to Vlora - stopping to stay the night in Dhermi. This was the idea. About ten or fifteen minutes out of Sarande we stopped in some small mountain village to take a break, got some sodas to drink and snapped a few photos. That mountainous winding road North, with steep climbs and descents and hairpin switchback turns had turned out to be more exhausting and scary to drive than we realized. It took longer as well. We didn't make it to Dhermi that Friday evening. We stopped off in a very small beach village called Borsh. There we stayed at a real nice hotel called Blue Days - the owner had an uncle who also lives in the Tampa Bay area - I met him but never got his name. Saturday late morning, after breakfast, we checked out of Blue Days, got back on that winding mountain road North, and some time Saturday afternoon we made it into Dhermi. Elin and I had heard quite a lot of things about Dhermi from various people we talked to in Sarande. Dhermi is some sort of beach hot spot in Albania. We had heard - (and learned when we got there) - that it could be difficult to fins a hotel or room to rent. It was. Every place was booked up. With all the hype on Dhermi, Elin and I also thought it would have been a bigger town. It was quite small. The water was very nice, but we really didn't get so impressed by Dhermi. We just stayed for that afternoon. Hanging out at the beach, swimming, drinking beer, and we ate lunch. Dhermi was also a little bit more expensive than the other places we went to. It was late in the afternoon when we left Dhermi, and we continued to head North. I figured it would possibly take us two or three hours to still go North to Vlora - I really didn't want to go to Vlora but it seemed like Elin wanted to. The road got worse. The climbs got higher and the switchback hairpin turns got tighter, there were long stretches of the road along cliffsides where there were no guard railings - it was just open road to sheer cliff drop offs. I got very nervous driving and Elin was sketched out too. We were only about fifteen or twenty minutes out from Dhermi. We decided to make a U-turn and go back South, but now it was a matter of where to find a place on the narrow climbing mountain road to do so. We were stuck with going on North. We finally had found a place to stop and turn around - right near some old abandoned, graffiti covered, crumbling building - there was an old man with a table set up selling homemade honey, wine and Raki (Albanian style moonshine) - we took a break from the driving, Elin bought a glass jar of the honey, and I shot some photos of the scenery - the views were spectacular, we met a French man and woman who were hiking - doing the Backpacker thing, they had been hiking all the way down through the mountains and were trying to get to this wide open stretch of long beach areas that we could see down to from where we were. The woman looked older than the guy, I took them to be together as a couple and Elin wondered if they were mother and son. We never found out, we didn't even get their names. We offered to give them a ride as far down the mountain and as close to that beach area as we could. From the main mountain road we could see a winding rocky dirt road to the beach. At first Elin and I really figured it could be no problem to drive that rocky dirt road out to the beach - since the beach road in Borsh was also a rocky dirt road (but flat) - we started to head down the rough road, with rocks bouncing and smashing the under side of the rental car, we didn't make it so far, I really thought I blew out a tire - catching a flat. I tried to pull over to the side of the narrow rocky road as far as I could. Elin and I got out to check the car, no flats, the French couple just sat in the backseat, it was obvious we couldn't go on - down that road to the beach, we had to let the French couple off to hike the rest of the way but at first they didn't get the hint - get the idea, the rental car would not have made it. Even when they got out of the car, they just stood around - not wanting to get their packs and gear out of the car, they figured we were OK and the car could make it the rest of the way down. I flat out told them no, that I didn't want to risk wrecking the car or getting stuck. They finally agreed. We unloaded their gear from the car, shook hands, wished each other safe good travels and said our goodbyes. I got the car turned around OK on the narrow rocky road but going back up the hill it got stuck and stalled out. Elin took over. She got the car started again - for a moment - got stuck again and stalled. Some young folks came up the rocky hill in a four wheel drive jeep and just drove around us - it was obvious we were stuck and needed some help. When Elin got the car started again - we noticed some what of a slight burnt smell, we hoped we weren't burning the motor up, the car seemed weak, the French guy ran back to help push the car - helping get us un-stuck. We finally made it back up the rocky hill back to the paved winding mountain road. We ended up just going back into Borsh. We went right back to the Blue Days hotel but since it was a Saturday night it was booked up full. The owner helped us out though - he called over one of his friends - we followed that guy to the other end of the strip down Borsh beach, up to another small hotel that was like a mom and pop type of place - run by a very nice old married couple. The room was like a small studio apartment style, it was only 30 Euros - (4,000 Lek) per night. We stayed there, back in Borsh for two nights.

   Monday we went back to Sarande - back to the Maestral hotel. A bit after 8PM, we went down to the small beach area at the Maestral for an evening swim, the sun was set but it wasn't dark yet - the sky was a deep dark blue, we sat on the beach chairs and just like that previous Wednesday - days before - when we had dinner at Demi, we could hear the faint prayer chanting from the Mosque across the bay. Tuesday was our last full day in Sarande. Late in the morning we went to the port to get the ferry tickets to go back to Korfu the next morning - Wednesday, then we returned our Fiat Punto rental car. The rest of that Tuesday we just relaxed - sat at the small beach area at the Maestral, drinking beer. We woke up Wednesday early morning around ten minutes before 7AM, the ferry was suppose to go at 9AM and we wanted to eat breakfast at the hotel before we left Sarande to go back to Korfu. It was a twenty minute walk from the Maestral hotel to the port. We were suppose to be at the port a half an hour before it was scheduled to leave - getting to the port at 8:30AM for the 9AM ferry, we were real early, getting to the port around 8AM - having almost an extra 30 minutes. We sat across the street from the port office at a small sidewalk café and drank coffee. At about 8:30AM Elin had found out that the ferry was running about an hour to an hour and a half late. At 9AM the ferry came into port, but we still had to wait some time. We waited on the sidewalk outside the port office to get some fresh air. While we waited, we saw Maksim that maniac taxi driver from the first couple of days, and yet another little Gypsy girl begged us for money - she stood next to Elin poking her in the arm, Elin finally walked away and the girl turned to me, I immediately firmly told her no - to go away, the little Gypsy girl finally left, and when she walked back to her mother, she got slapped across the face for not getting any money. We finally got boarded onto the ferry at 9:45AM, but then we sat on the boat at the dock until 10:30AM.

   Back on Korfu island - the hotel I booked for our last night in Greece from hotels.com - it was called the Divani Palace Korfu, and it was labelled as in Korfu City, the photos on the website - it looked quite fancy and baller, and it was a bit pricy - around 750 Kroners, but when I booked it the evening before - I figured we'd go all out in style for our last night. So when we got back onto Korfu island that hot, late Wednesday morning, Elin and I figured we could walk to the hotel since we thought it was suppose to be in Korfu city. We walked a few blocks and I went into another hotel to ask for directions to the Divani - it turned out that the Divani was really about five kilometers out from Korfu city - (but it was close to the airport which was good.) It was too hot and too far to walk, we needed to take a taxi. There was a bus stop right outside of the hotel where I had asked for the directions, and we spotted the bus coming up the street so we hurried to the stop - we did make it to the stop in time but the bus didn't stop - just kept going on by. We walked a few more blocks and found a taxi parked curb side in front of a café but the driver was nowhere in sight. We wanted to wait for the driver, the owner of the café came out and tried to get us to go in his café for lunch - the café was dead empty, no one inside. The taxi driver never showed up, and just as Elin and I were about to start walking some more to find another taxi - another taxi did drive by and I waved him down. It cost 15 Euros to get to the hotel. When the taxi pulled up in front of the Divani we thought it couldn't have been right, even though it was. It looked kind of old and run down. We walked into the lobby and I went to the front desk - they had our reservation so again - we were at the right hotel. The place looked like a rejected throwback from 1978 Las Vegas. Normally this type of seventies-retro décor of a place would be something I would dig on - but this place was just...not so good at all. Our room was a bit depressing, stank of cigarette smoke, and it had two twin beds not the double bed I had booked for. We went back downstairs, to the lobby front desk to complain and tell them we were not at all satisfied. The lady at the front desk was quite rude and bitchy. She told us to just push the beds together, that the hotel was booked up and there were only two rooms left available - basically we were stuck and had to deal with it. It was our last night so we just had to make the best of it. We went back up to the room to get our stuff situated, I opened the balcony door to air our the room, and we changed clothes to go out for lunch. I went back down to the lobby - I had to suck it up, eat my pride, act nice and deal with that rude front desk lady - asking her if there were any cafes, or anything close by in walking distance where Elin and I could eat lunch. She told me there was only one café closest by that was about a ten minute walk, she said the hotel was at the end of everything - out from the city center, she did say we could walk to the center if we did want to, that it was only about three and a half kilometers - (which I thought strange since everyone else had told us the hotel was five or six kilometers out from Korfu city). After all this mess, we found out there is a bus - (the Blue bus as it's called) - that runs every twenty minutes and there was a stop right in front of the hotel. But for lunch we opted for the café that was a ten minute walk away. The café had a cool look to it - I dug on the décor, but the food and service was terrible. After lunch we went back to the hotel and spent most of the afternoon hanging out at the pool. The pool area was the only nice thing about the Divani. In the evening we took the Blue bus into Korfu city. Elin and I walked about the streets of Korfu, snapping some photos, and we ate dinner at a nice, cozy sidewalk café we had found. We ended our night there drinking wine.