Last year, Dan bought a book about canyoning in Albania, so that's how we ended up deciding to go adventure there. I read about the beautiful mountains, but what tipped the scales in Albania's direction was what I read about the food - it's kind of a mix of Greek, Italian, Turkish, and more. And with a mountain range named the "Accursed Mountains", we kind of HAD to check it out.
Before we left, we had to get our ducks in a row, including creating our "geriatric garden" (raised beds) and putting the plants in the garden, getting and training a puppy, packing a lot of gear, wrapping up things things at school for my work and putting together the master spreadsheet for our trip.
And before we knew it, it was time to depart. It was a long travel day, but we finally made it to Dhermi, Albania. We said goodbye to our pups, Maya and James and then headed off to catch the Concord Coach with a quick stop to get the salads that we always get for flights at Market Basket.
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| The town of Dhermi: typical Albania architecture in this region |
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| Ernie "helped" us pack all of our gear for the trip, including canyoning gear |
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| Leaving our pups for 2 weeks in the capable hands of James and Maron |
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| Ernie is going to look different when we return |
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| We just finished up making our "geriatric garden" right before we left. This also will look much different when we return. |
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| Look at all of that luggage - over half of it is for canyoning. |
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| Somebody was super tired and slept on the Concord Coach. |
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| Our Market Basket salads in the airport |
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| Here we go! Our first flight to Amsterdam. |
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| Ready for some zzz's on the flight |
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| Our Air Serbia flight to Belgrade |
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| The married couple I sat with on the plane to Belgrade. I received a several hour lesson on the history of Serbia. You can see Dan in the opposite row from me. |
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| From the air, Serbia looks like a giant quilt with all of the farm land. |
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| We have encountered several square toilets...why? |
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| Flying into Albania we got a glimpse of the high, snow capped Accursed Mountains. There mountains everywhere you look when you fly into Albania. |
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| The Tirane Airport is small with very few gates, so the planes just park along this giant paved area and busses pick you up to bring you to the airport. |
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| Our rental car with the Tirane Airport in the background. Getting to the rental car company with all of our gear looks easy, but you couldn't cross the street there, so it was a bit of a sweaty and stressful time. |
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| Our whoopie pie from back home had seen better days. |
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| A nice lookout spot along the Adriatic Coast. |
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| The 2 highest peaks in the Albanian Riviera mountains - we hiked the one on the left (6620ft - higher than Mount Washington). |
We arrived at our lodging sometime after 7:30, so we dumped our bags and walked to dinner. We were able to keep our eyes open long enough to finish our dinner. Then we beat feet back to our room and hit the hay for some much needed sleep.
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| The entrance to our lodging in Dhermi. |
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| The gate to our lodging. |
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| Our 1st Greek salad of the trip. |
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| Enjoying our 1st meal in Albania with the remaining colors of the sunset over the sea. |
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| The 1st restaurant at which we ate - it was only a few minutes walking distance from our lodging. At one point during dinner, all of the power went off and no one even batted an eye. The owners just pulled out the generator and it was business as usual (just a little noisier). |
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