Shirley Adventures: Day 10: Corfu, Greece & Albania

When we booked an excursion for July 4th, we booked online. Robert started with my parents first and then did ours... which meant on this day, my parents were able to get the tour for Corfu and we weren't. It was sold out. So.... my parents toured Corfu and we went to Albania. We rode a hydrofoil from Corfu to the Port of Saranda, about a 30 minute ride. Then we boarded a tour bus and headed to the ancient town of Butrint. The drive there was interesting... we drove down old military roads that were very narrow. We stoped near a monument and checked out all the bomb shelters. They were hard to spot from the road, but once we got out and walked up the hill, we could spot them. Our tour guide referred to us Americans as ex-enemies. He meant it as a joke and told us about how when he was in school they would talk about how much they hated Americans. Hearing how he described his life in the past, made me really thankful to have been born and raised in America.

Robert and our tour guide sitting on a bomb shelter.

The monument showing the Albanian flag.

We then drove to Butrint. The ruins here were only about 20% excavated. We all sprayed mosquito spray and then headed into the gates to see the ruins. After seeing Rome, Ancient Corinth, and Ancient Olympia.... this wasn't all that impressive.

After our hike around the ruins we walked to a little bar area where I had a nice cold coke and Robert tried some Albanian beer, which he liked. Then we boarded our bus to go and see more of the Port of Saranda. We ran into a problem as we were headed back down the old military road... we came upon another tour bus and the road wasn't wide enough to pass. The other bus had to back up a mile or so to a place where it could pull over to let us pass.