Sarande & the Albanian night life! - Aug 19, 2007

We asked various Albanians over the last two weeks what one place they would visit in Albania. They usually said Sarande. Conveniently, its the perfect jumping off place for Greece, which is where we are headed.

So we rolled into Sarande, or skidded and careened I should say. April already mentioned it, but the bus ride from Vlora to Sarande (the SEVEN hour ride which we were told was not longer than three hours) was the ride of a lifetime. Over two hours into the trip when we finally got seats, we were high in the Albanian mountains, on a windey old road that would comfortably fit one normal sized vehicle. Watch the action as a full-sized passenger bus comes beeping around the corner!!!! April had a front seat on all the action. As if things couldn't get worse, I think our pugnacious driver was getting tired of the trip because he drove the last five miles like he was Mario Andreti or something! Ha ha . . . and we live on.

So we stumbled off the bus in Sarande, heaved our packs onto our shoulders, and started marching off to . . . where? At this point I was starting to think: "What are we doing?" Fortunately, our friend Tyrone Emery (who has traveled extensively himself) was with us and we sort of leeched off of his confidence.

We found a great hotel for a great price, the nicest lodgings yet, just off of the boardwalk, right above a loud club, with a great view of the city and all the Saturday night street action. We got a bottle of wine and enjoyed the night life from the peace of our balcony.

As we were wandering the boardwalk Saturday evening a wonderful thing happened! We found a beautiful church right there by the beach and it turned out to be Orthodox (we peeked in and found it all aglow for a baptismal service). This was a real blessing and we attended the Divine Litury there Sunday morning.