Albania

We came to Albania with all sorts of stereotypical warnings and a sense that we were taking our adventure to a new level. As we handed over the 10 euro entrance fee, a Swedish/Macedonian girl came up to confirm whether it was above board. "I know they are going to rip us off . . ." she started out saying, while I reassured her that our research on the Internet and in the Lonely Planet confirmed that it was standard procedure. We came through the mountains and into farmland and past houses and hotels being built everywhere -- Albania is obviously in the middle of a construction boom, perhaps building off the money sent home by people like my students in London. We arrived in the port city of Durres and settled into a beach-side hotel. The hotel staff, who we could only communicate with on a rudimentary level as they insist on speaking Italian to us, were a bit baffled by our insistence that we would walk into the town a few kilometres up the road. It seems everyone here drives Mercedes Benz' or BMWs -- Fords are definitely a minority vehicle here. The building work is everywhere. We explored the beach and had dinner with waves lapping the sand in front of us. The next morning the sky was a nasty colour of grey and a huge thunderstorm passed by.

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We again walked up to the town, where every intersection had been turned into a small lake, to catch a bus to the tiny town of Lezha to stay in Mussolini's former hunting lodge. Long story short, that was perhaps one of the biggest disasters so far. After a three hour train journey to cover the 50 km or so with a 17-year-old geek trying to talk to us using his 15 words of English we were picked up by a 'taxi' of three people and taken back to a crumbling ruin of a building. We came up with no fewer than 13 major problems with the hotel before convincing ourselves that we could leave it and stay in the much nicer room down the road. We fled as gracefully as possible under the circumstances and went to explore the nearby wetlands of the National Park before a large, home-cooked dinner. The next morning we spent in Shkodra, looking at the photo exhibit and the famous fortress while waiting for our bus to take us to Montenegro. E