Saturday – Sarande, Albania
Today, we arrive in Sarande, on the coast of Albania.
Albania is one of those places that I would have struggled to point to on a map of the world. I now know that it is located just North of Mainland Greece, and sandwiched between Macedonia in the east and Montenegro in the North, at roughly the meeting point between The Adriatic and Ionian Seas. Just a few miles off the coast of Albania, to the West, and clearly visible from Sarande, is the island of Corfu.
As it was only a half-day visit, and we didn’t have any tour escorting duties this morning, we simply chose to take a walk along the seafront that curved around the bay.
Despite there being a few more high-rise buildings than we’d prefer, we rather liked Sarande. Albania is clearly an emerging holiday destination, having the feel of a place that welcomes visitors but hasn’t quite worked out exactly how to do it yet. There seemed to be a lot of Albanian visitors too, in much the same way that we might have a day trip to Whitby, although we also noticed that it felt very male dominated, with large groups of men, doing man-things.
Once we decided we’d walked far enough, we sat down at a shoreside bar and had a relaxing drink before heading back the way we’d come. We sat and mused over our drinks whether or not they took euros, and thinking that we should probably have asked before ordering, deciding finally that they would because the vendors on the sea front that we’d passed were all asking for euros. However; when I went to pay, the man behind the bar handed me a bill for 300 something-or-others. I held up a 5-euro note, saying ‘euros?’, to which he picked up a calculator and told me that it would be 2 euros and 20 cents… not bad for a Sprite and an iced coffee. When I handed him the note, he started peeling off foreign currency by way of change… I shook my head and insisted that he just keep the whole 5 euros; I really didn’t want a pocketful of money that I was unlikely to be able to spend. He seemed grateful, and as I walked away, I wondered if that was a ploy he employed with all euro-wielding customers…
This afternoon, I held my final workshop, in which we painted a seascape, creating seaspray with sandpaper. It all seemed to go down well, and folks thanked me for the classes as they left. As we have a rather busy day scheduled for tomorrow, an exhibition isn’t really very feasible, so I can say that my work here is done.
In the evening, it was another formal night. I’m not a fan, as you know, but the free wine rather makes up for it, along with the fact that Tracey and I also managed to bag a table for two.
