Albania & Montenegro

Looking over the fiord

Kotor

Kotor old town

Kotor

Cruise ship Sea Cloud last seen in the Aegean

Along the fiord

Herceg Novi, Montenegro

Montenegro

Do NOT take any photos here; see the arresting hand at right

Downtown Tirana

Durres

Durres port

" Mushroom " bunkers literally along the whole coast

Porto Palermo

Porto Palermo below Ali Pasha`s fortress

Folkdancing, Saranda

Saranda

Saranda waterfront, Albania

Albania was an experience; a lovely, poor country with great potential, struggling to overcome its communist past, and yet it is hard to imagine how that can be easily achieved. Wherever we went we found the waterfront and nearby streets to be attractive but a few blocks back things were quite different. We visited Saranda, a resort town not far from Corfu, and then sailed north along an interesting coastline to a new Italian owned marina at Orikum which was very small and in the middle of nowhere. Enroute we overnighted at a small pier in a remote harbour below Ali Pasha`s fortress. Interestingly, the whole coastline is littered with small mushroom shaped concrete bunkers, 700,000 of which were built during the communist era to defend the nation. Paranoia? Then on to Durres, a small city and a busy commercial port which left the yacht filthy with soot and dust. A short bus journey inland to the capital Tirana, where we barely escaped arrest for photographing the guards at an important building, before exit clearance and passage to Montenegro.
The coastline of Montenegro has some spectacular scenery and most of all in the fiord leading to the old town of Kotor perched below a sheer cliff just begging to be climbed. So, we are now recovering some strength before moving on to Croatia.