After a fantastic day’s riding yesterday it would not be easy to beat it today, but we tried and in some ways we did.
The night before when we were down at the river by Vikos Gorge we met a German couple and when we asked where they would go next they mentioned Albania. We looked in the map and realized that we were quite North in Greece and less than 50 Ks from Albania. We then decided that we would go to the border and if there were not too many cars and things would be easy (we would be leaving the European Union) on the border we would go through and find a place to have lunch.
The way through the mountains to the border post was beautiful and when we got to the border we were very well treated on both sides (Greece and Albania). The biggest surprise was when we arrived in Albania, just after immigration, there was a group of young people welcoming us into Albania under the program Smile for Albania.
“Over 1,000 young people are committed to promoting Albania’s tourism potential through ‘Smile Albania’ project that will be implemented during the summer season in all cross-border points and tourist destinations. The initiative was unveiled on the International Day for Biological Diversity by Minister of Tourism and Environment Blendi Klosi. “Smile Albania is a project that will focus on the presentation of Albania’s natural beauty and on the hospitality shown towards the tourists visiting the country,” Klosi said.”
We took pictures and videos with them and who knows, may be the GSA and us will be in an Albania tourism video somewhere.
We then got lost in a very small village and were told that we were probably going the wrong way and after getting the GPS working again decided to go to Sarande, which is a resort town and being August it was full of people and there was a festive mood in the air.
The way there was interesting as we had to go up a pretty steep mountain road with switchbacks and caravan traffic.
We found Albania to be a country of contrasts, with people with lots of money and flaunting it very close to people that are extremely poor.
We also found the costs of things very low, by far the lowest we encountered in our travels this time. For lunch we had a pizza, two cokes, one large still water and a dessert all for 10€. Anywhere else it would have been closer to 25-30€.
We enjoyed our time in Sarande which was full of young vibrant people, lots of cars on the road and the beach totally packed.
As we had a ferry to catch we started back south towards Greece and went past another border post and also without any problems.
Riding in Albania is not easy as the roads are not in the greatest of shape and drivers are quite aggressive in their positioning on the road. They seem to prefer to ride much closer to the center of the road (sometimes over the line). One needs to be quite watchful and we found ourselves riding more on the right hand side of our lane but then one has to be careful with irregularities on the side of the road.
We arrived in Igoumenitsa at about 4:10pm and made our way towards the port where we were able to catch the 4:30pm ferry to Corfu.
By the time we sat on the boat we were exhausted. A combination of the heat, running around and the adrenalin of such a full day got to us. It was good to relax for 1.5 hours during the crossing.
As we arrived in Corfu Town, we decided to first do a quick tour of the main part of the city called, Old Town.
We could not resist a beautiful restaurant just by the water and as they had a good parking place for the motorcycle, we stopped and had our dinner enjoying the boat and walking traffic going by. We even had a group of Romanians and the accordion coming through and they knew a Portuguese song so we got our flags out and got a group of Romanians, Greek and Portuguese singing “Cheira Bem, Cheira a Lisboa”.
The sun was going down fast and we still had over an hour to get to our hotel, so we sadly finished our dinner and made our way to our accommodation on the northern part of the island.
It was a very nice ride at the end of the day as we went past many beaches that we had seen when we looked for our accommodation spot.
We got to our place after the sun had set but night had not come in yet so we were able to see the beach where we would be using tomorrow. Looks great !
Make Life a Ride !
Facebook post with some photos of the day
Click HERE to see first set of photos and videos of DAY 14 !
Click HERE to see second set of photos and videos of DAY 14 !
The night before when we were down at the river by Vikos Gorge we met a German couple and when we asked where they would go next they mentioned Albania. We looked in the map and realized that we were quite North in Greece and less than 50 Ks from Albania. We then decided that we would go to the border and if there were not too many cars and things would be easy (we would be leaving the European Union) on the border we would go through and find a place to have lunch.
The way through the mountains to the border post was beautiful and when we got to the border we were very well treated on both sides (Greece and Albania). The biggest surprise was when we arrived in Albania, just after immigration, there was a group of young people welcoming us into Albania under the program Smile for Albania.
“Over 1,000 young people are committed to promoting Albania’s tourism potential through ‘Smile Albania’ project that will be implemented during the summer season in all cross-border points and tourist destinations. The initiative was unveiled on the International Day for Biological Diversity by Minister of Tourism and Environment Blendi Klosi. “Smile Albania is a project that will focus on the presentation of Albania’s natural beauty and on the hospitality shown towards the tourists visiting the country,” Klosi said.”
We took pictures and videos with them and who knows, may be the GSA and us will be in an Albania tourism video somewhere.
We then got lost in a very small village and were told that we were probably going the wrong way and after getting the GPS working again decided to go to Sarande, which is a resort town and being August it was full of people and there was a festive mood in the air.
The way there was interesting as we had to go up a pretty steep mountain road with switchbacks and caravan traffic.
We found Albania to be a country of contrasts, with people with lots of money and flaunting it very close to people that are extremely poor.
We also found the costs of things very low, by far the lowest we encountered in our travels this time. For lunch we had a pizza, two cokes, one large still water and a dessert all for 10€. Anywhere else it would have been closer to 25-30€.
We enjoyed our time in Sarande which was full of young vibrant people, lots of cars on the road and the beach totally packed.
As we had a ferry to catch we started back south towards Greece and went past another border post and also without any problems.
Riding in Albania is not easy as the roads are not in the greatest of shape and drivers are quite aggressive in their positioning on the road. They seem to prefer to ride much closer to the center of the road (sometimes over the line). One needs to be quite watchful and we found ourselves riding more on the right hand side of our lane but then one has to be careful with irregularities on the side of the road.
We arrived in Igoumenitsa at about 4:10pm and made our way towards the port where we were able to catch the 4:30pm ferry to Corfu.
By the time we sat on the boat we were exhausted. A combination of the heat, running around and the adrenalin of such a full day got to us. It was good to relax for 1.5 hours during the crossing.
As we arrived in Corfu Town, we decided to first do a quick tour of the main part of the city called, Old Town.
We could not resist a beautiful restaurant just by the water and as they had a good parking place for the motorcycle, we stopped and had our dinner enjoying the boat and walking traffic going by. We even had a group of Romanians and the accordion coming through and they knew a Portuguese song so we got our flags out and got a group of Romanians, Greek and Portuguese singing “Cheira Bem, Cheira a Lisboa”.
The sun was going down fast and we still had over an hour to get to our hotel, so we sadly finished our dinner and made our way to our accommodation on the northern part of the island.
It was a very nice ride at the end of the day as we went past many beaches that we had seen when we looked for our accommodation spot.
We got to our place after the sun had set but night had not come in yet so we were able to see the beach where we would be using tomorrow. Looks great !
Make Life a Ride !
Facebook post with some photos of the day
Click HERE to see first set of photos and videos of DAY 14 !
Click HERE to see second set of photos and videos of DAY 14 !
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