Day 3: Albania

We had a day trip with a difference planned for today: a visit to the town of Saranda in Albania! Corfu is actually quite close to the coast of Albania and regular ferries run across the Ionian sea every day. We had an early start to catch ours, which was timetabled to leave Corfu at 08.45. That might not sound terribly early, but the tickets said that for an international departure we needed to get to the terminal no later than an hour in advance of the departure time. And the international ferry terminal in Corfu Town is about a 30 minute walk from where we are staying.

We left the apartment just before 07.15 and set off on our way. It was comparatively cool in the early morning sunshine and so the walk to the ferry terminal felt easier than it had yesterday afternoon, when we'd gone to scope it out. As we got closer to the international terminal building, a woman stopped us and asked us if we were travelling with Ionian Seaways. We were, so we showed her our tickets. "Oh," she said, "those are normal tickets!" and she waved us on our way. We were left slightly confused about what a normal - or a not-normal - ticket might be!

It seemed to have been a lie that it was necessary to be at the terminal 60 minutes before departure, because when we got inside we found that passport control wasn't even open yet. We sat around for a while and waited, confident that we were at least in the correct part of the terminal.

Passport control eventually opened and we were stamped out of Greece, then had quite a bit more time to wait around before we were able to board the ferry. Confusion ensued once boarding started, because while there were a lot of people waiting for a ferry to Albania, there were at least two (if not three) different companies running them, and not everybody was booked on the same boat. We approached the correct one and, upon showing our tickets, were instructed as holders of "normal" tickets to climb some stairs up to the outside deck. That suited us fine, and we found some nice seats. The majority of other people on the boat seemed to part of a large excursion group; they all had boarding cards rather than tickets and were directed towards a different part of the boat.

The ferry set off a little bit late; more like 09.00 rather than 08.45. As we pulled out of the harbour we had a view of both the Old and New Fortresses in Corfu Town.

We also sailed past Vido island, which we'd seen from the Old Fortress yesterday.

The journey across to Saranda was only about an hour and so it wasn't long until we got our first views of the Albanian coast.

Although the southern part of Albania isn't the most mountainous, it definitely didn't look flat here.

There were various announcements during the course of the ferry journey, for the benefit of the people who were on the excursion. At one point they were reminded to turn their data off, as their phones might now be connecting to an Albanian network and charging them a lot of money. We took that as a sign to switch over to our Albanian e-sims and also to adjust our watches; while Greece is two hours ahead of UK time, Albania is only one hour ahead. So if the ferry was on time, we would have left Corfu at 08.45 and arrived in Albania at 08.35!

As it was, it was after 09.00 in Albania before we started pulling into Saranda. It isn't necessarily the prettiest town in Albania and we could see it looked quite built up.

The sea was a beautiful shade of blue though and we could see a sandy beach in the distance.

Once the ferry arrived there was more confusion, as the people with boarding cards were directed towards a particular port exit where they were going to board their tour bus. It wasn't immediately clear what the people with normal tickets were supposed to do, but eventually we were directed into the main terminal building where there was a short queue for passport control. 

Passport control ended up taking longer than expected, because whatever computer equipment the border guard were using seemed to be down! We waited for quite a while, while they seemingly tried and failed to process the people at the front of the queue. Luckily, it soon came back up and by about 09.30 we were officially in Albania. No passport stamps here, though!

The bus we wanted to catch wasn't until 10.30, but we had a few things we wanted to accomplish before then. First of all, we set off the physically locate the bus stop, which on my map was pinned as being just around the corner from the port. When we reached the right spot there was indeed a bus stop sign there, although there was no indication of a timetable or what buses stopped there, so we were just going to have to return at 10.30 and hope for the best.

Secondly, we wanted to change some Euros into Albanian lek. The Albanian currency is one of those which you can't obtain outside of the country, but there seem to be ATMs around every street corner and there were multiple exchange offices marked on the main street. We walked along the seaside promenade to track one down.

It was really lovely by the sea, with lots of bright purple flowers.

We changed the money without any problems, then had one task left to complete: a second breakfast. We'd had yoghurt and honey before leaving the apartment in Corfu this morning, but that was several hours again now. We ended up at a bakery close to the port, where we bought cheese burek (byrek in Albanian) and iced coffee.

The burek was delicious and the coffee was really good too

We headed back to the bus stop, where I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bus did turn up at 10.30 as scheduled. I knew the ticket price to our destination (Butrint) was 200 lek each (around €2), but I wasn't clear on how to buy a ticket. The bus driver certainly didn't seem to be taking money off anyone and the bus set off shortly after 10.30 without anyone having bought a ticket at all.

We slowly made our way through the streets of Saranda, with more and more people joining the bus at different stops. We were going to the ultimate destination of Butrint, an archaeological site outside Saranda, but lots of people were also heading to the beach resort of Ksamil, which is a stop along the route. Eventually, a conductor with a large bumbag of small change boarded the bus and started squeezing his way up and down selling tickets. It wasn't an easy task as the bus was full to standing by this point, but he made sure that no one got away without paying!

When we got to Ksamil the majority of other passengers got off. It looked like a nice little town; we drove past a monument of what looked like people doing an Albanian national dance.

Around 11.15 we finally arrived at the Butrint National Park.

We bought our entrance tickets, which cost 1,000 lek each (£8.65). Little birds - possibly swallows - were nesting in the roof of the ticket office!

Butrint is home to the remains of ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine civilisations. 

The Venetians were here at some point too when fighting the Ottoman Empire, and so the first sight we came to was actually a Venetian defence tower.

Once we walked past that, the remains began to look older.

Info board informed us that Caesar had arrived in Butrint in 44BC and decided to turn it into a Roman colonial city.

We admired the remains of the Roman theatre...

...and also the Roman baths.

They seemed to be home to a significant number of turtles today!

We passed some ruins which looked like they might once have been a church...

...and then arrived at the ruins of what had once been a palace.

The info board informed us that it had originally been a townhouse, then converted into a bigger palace around 400 AD.

Unfortunately, the owner ultimately had to abandon the site when the water table began rising.

All of Butrint is very close to the water.

We were surrounded by some sort of coastal lagoon rather than the actual sea, I think.

The water was a beautiful shade of blue anyway and it provided us with some great views as we made our way around the site.

Our next stop was the remains of a Byzantine baptistery.

It was supposed to have an amazing mosaic floor, but all we could see today was gravel. The info board explained that because the water in the lagoon rises and falls seasonally, the mosaic is kept covered so that it isn't damaged by the process of continually being submerged and dried out. It sounds like it is only uncovered every few years!

It was a shame we didn't get to see the baptistery, but just behind it we came to the remains of a very impressive basilica.

This was one of the best-preserved parts of the ruins.

The basilica was built in the early sixth century.

It was called the Giant Basilica and it really was huge.

The floor here was originally covered by mosaic too and we found a tiny bit behind a protective cordon.

After that our route led us around the side of the peninsula, with more sea views.

We came to a series of gates, which were the original entrances into the town. This was the Lion Gate.

The info board explained that the image above the gate is of a lion devouring the head of a bull.

We came to some more coastal views...

...then found we had reached the limit of the town walls. From here the path led uphill.

At the top of the hill was a castle building, which is home to the Butrint museum. Some of the statues which were originally dotted around the site are in the museum for safe-keeping.

From the castle gardens there was a great view out over the lagoon.

I was also very excited to find our first Albanian flag.

We decided to try a selfie. Helen did well to fit both of us in as well as the flag

After the castle our route led downhill, back towards the entrance and ultimately the bus stop. There was a bit of confusion about where the bus stop actually was, because when we arrived the bus had dropped us off in a part of the Butrint car park with no visible bus stop signs. We walked up the road a little way, to the point where the bus stop to Saranda was marked on my offline map, and were pleasantly surprised to find a bus waiting for us there.

The journey back into town was a bit quicker and less crowded than the journey out. Soon we were back in Saranda, strolling along the promenade.

It was around half past two by this point and we were pretty hungry. We found a restaurant on the seafront that served pizza and sat down for a late lunch. We were so hungry that I forgot to take any pictures, but we had two large pizzas, two bottles of water and half a litre of wine... and the bill came to 2310 lek, which is less than £20!

We just had time for one more iced coffee from our breakfast bakery before it was time to head back to the ferry terminal for our 17.00 ferry back to Corfu. We got there not long after 16.00, which was again what was printed on the tickets but did turn out to be a bit early. There had been some drama surrounding this ferry before the trip, as the ferry company had messaged me at some point last week to say that the 17.00 boat was no longer running and we could choose to be switched to the 15.00 instead. I felt like the 15.00 was a bit too early and would make our visit to Butrint quite rushed, so asked for a refund and was planning to book a later ferry back with another operator. I then got another message saying that the 17.00 was going to run after all, just with a different boat to the one we'd originally booked on. So even if we had to wait a bit for passport control etc, I was pleased that the journey was at least taking place as scheduled

The day trip people who had been on our morning crossing were returning on the 15.00, so the 17.00 ferry was also pretty quiet and peaceful. We had a final view of Saranda as we pulled out of the harbour...

...and then around an hour later we had some more great views of Corfu Town from the sea.

It was around 19.45 Greek time before we got back to our apartment, so today has been a very long day. But it's also been a very exciting one. Albania was a new country for both of us and one that I've wanted to visit for a very long time, having had to cancel a complicated trip I'd booked to northern Albania for the summer of 2020. We had a really great time today and I will definitely be back; hopefully one day managing to complete the 2020 itinerary