Things are fairly copacetic, to use that funny old American word (meaning broadly OK) between me and the missus. We came back from a trip around Albania and Northern Greece yesterday - narrowly beating a complete shut down by all UK airports due to a huge pall of Volcanic ash in the atmosphere. Bloody Icelanders again!
The trip was surprisingly successful. All sorts of variables could have gone wrong but they never did. Every hotel was found, was OK. No-one was nasty, ripped us off or even laughed at us. We weren't stranded at remote border crossings, unduly soaked with rain or afflicted with food poisoning. Most importantly, the Albanian solo expedition was really stimulating and not in the way one might fear such as hinted at in movies such as Liam Neesons 'Taken'. (The bit were Liam tells his daughter on the phone 'You will be tak-en!' just before she is forcibly abducted by Albanian sex traffickers of course became the catchphrase of the trip).
We left our Greek hire car at Ioaninna as one isn't allowed to take rentals across the border. Then bussed to Kakavia which is the crossing point; as with all third world type interfaces (America/Mexico springs to mind) it is dead easy going out and very slow coming back. There's a long walk through litter to the other side and it all looks a bit vague about how one proceeds from there... But then hey! Here's a taxi driver and in return for 40 euros walks us straight through customs apparently saving us 40 euros in temporary visas and then drives us about 40 miles over a mountain range straight to the entrance of our chosen hotel, the Brilant, in Sarande. Our suite with twin bathrooms, multiple balconies and plenty of sofas, marble, etc is way fancier than anywhere else we will stay on the trip and costs 60 euros. Even then I'm still not quite sure about this country. We go for a walk in this funny little resort town which although it doesn't have a proper beach is still being turned into a sort of Eastern version of Benidorm circa 1972. I'm definitely edgy because the place seems to be falling down even before it's been finished, there's lots of rubbish, stray dogs, sewage smells, funny little men carrying AK47s and gangs of youths who make our UK feral hoodies look like extras from Wind in the Willows. I'm braced for screeching gypsy beggars to surround us with big sheets of cardboard and all that good old holiday paranoia and... Nothing. We are completely left alone by everyone. Weirdly, there are no beggars, panhandlers or even weary Africans selling knock off DVDS. I start to relax. All we have to do is score some food that my vegetarian 14 year old son and fussy, nearly vegetarian (but hating vegetables and fruit) 13 year old daughter can handle. I start to tense up again.
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