Albania or Bust

Does he look a little nervous?

I am almost embarrassed to admit that we keep a count of the countries we visit.  We have a bucket list goal of visiting 100 countries so when we docked in Corfu, Greece we could not resist taking the ferry across the channel to Albania. George had done a lot of research about this little excursion.  When you are on a cruise ship and you take a cruise line sponsored excursion, you KNOW that the ship will wait for you if for any reason you are late.  This is not true if you go off on your own.  At the time the ship is about to leave, you hear one long blast of the horn and that means you had better run and get back on the ship.  I actually saw someone on our Black Sea cruise who came running up to the ship after they had already pulled away but were still very close to the dock and the ship did not go back the 25 feet to re-dock.  We did NOT want that to happen to us so the night before we arrived in Corfu we were understandably nervous but still thinking we would at least try to add Albania to our list!

Thanks to George's careful planning, we found the ferry ticket office quite easily and purchased our tickets for the hydrofoil.  I had read horror stories of people going by hydrofoil to Albania and having  it break down leaving them no choice but to stay several days in Saranda while it was repaired.  Not a scenario we wanted to experience!  

We made it to the hydrofoil just in time and had an easy 30 minute trip to Saranda, Albania. Next problem was that all the organized tours from the port area took too long.  We knew that we had to be back in time to catch the one ferry of the day.  My brilliant husband decided to go and ask the very nice woman at the ferry ticket office.  She just happened to have a friend who was willing to drive us out to the Roman ruins, wait for us and then get us back in time and all for $30! Perfect!

We explored the Ruins and then headed back to the entrance hoping our driver would be there. And he was there waiting for us, took me to a souvenir shop and we had still had time to splurge and enjoy a real Coke and not a Coke Zero!  We were celebrating after all!

And lo and behold the hydrofoil experienced no mechanical difficulties.  We left just on time.  Our cruise ship was still docked.  The rain didn't start until we were back in Greece.  

A perfect day!  George planned all of this as a Christmas gift to me!  We can add Albania to the list now!  

Turns out that wandering totally alone in a Roman ruin from the 7th century is pretty magical!

After the Romans the town had quite a turbulent history but by the 19th century was a small fishing village clustered around a Venetian Castle. 

 George looks pleased because we explored the entire site and were headed back to our driver, hoping that he would still be there.