The Hairy Lemon

July 9-Day 9
We left this morning for Albania. We caught the bus at 7 am to take us the Corfu town. It's a half hour trip by cab. We bought our tickets to Albania and got on the ferry at 9 am. The ferry was only 1 1/2 hours and we were there. We walked over to the info center and it happened to not have much info. So we tried one hotel that ended up being to expensive. I remembered that we had a hostel card that a girl from the last hostel gave us and I called that number fro the hotel. It was answered by an English speaking woman who owns it. She sounded really nice and said she would come over and pick us up from the hotel. She was there in a min. which was great because we were all hot and tired. She arrived in an old jeep with the steering wheel on the wrong side. She told us that she only had two dorm rooms and we might not like that we said no we wouldn't so she suggested a place that she knew that had 4 beds and a little kitchen, but when she showed it to us it was too far out of town and very rustic and no stove or anything to cook on. Then she suggested that maybe we could come to her hostel we could have her room and she would bunk with the girls. We checked it out and it was an apartment with 3 rooms with bunks in each including hers. We loved the apartment and she was great so we decided to stay. The price for us all we only 30 euros including breakfast. We are thinking we will stay for 3 or 4 nights. We only have dial-up here so we won't be posting pictures. It seems like the town will be very interesting. The town is called Saranda and is in Albania. It is quite small with houses spanning up the hillside. There is a waterfront promenade where the small shops and restaurants overlook the Adriatic sea. Saranda looks out towards Corfu. The whole town is in an unfinished state of construction. There are new buildings everywhere you look. It looks like there is a building boom happening and yet nothing is happening. It is all at a standstill. There are buildings that a few floors are done and people or hotels are using and the five stories above it are unfinished. There is also lots of garbage and the streets are in very poor condition. It's like the people up and walked away. We haven't been here long enough to find out what is behind it all. The culture and town and people remind us a bit of what we would think it would be like in Egypt or Turkey, the local music and the bareness of the hills and the way the people look. We went to a wonderful restaurant that was recommended to us by our host. It was called Tani's. They had mostly Italian food, though Dean asked him to make a traditional Albanian dish and he made us mussels fried in butter, tomatoes, feta cheese, garlic and dill. It was amazing and I don't even like mussels. Every dish was the best we've had yet in Europe. There is a UNESCO heritage site here and we are planning on seeing it tomorrow. It is the ancient stone town of Gjirokastra. There is a 13th century castle and the whole town is built from stone. People still live there today.