Week 29 – Bulgaria – the Eastern Rhodopes Mountains

The view from our window at Wild Farm

We spent this week in a remote corner of Bulgaria enjoying the wild landscape of the Rhodopes mountains, swapping van life  for the comfort of a farm guesthouse.

On our last night in Greece, we wild camped by the harbour in Farni. It’s a village close to the border with Bulgaria and near Lake Vistonida.

It was a good spot for flamingo watching.

But thanks to some boy racers revving up round the van after 3 am, we didn’t have a very restful night. Things did eventually quieten down but we headed for the border feeling exhausted.

Thankfully the crossing into Bulgaria was painless. The road there was excellent and the process very smooth.

Pull up to a booth with Greece passport control in one window, Bulgaria in the other, buy the 15 euro road tax vignette and then we were on our way to the Eastern Rhodopes mountains, home to wolves, bears and vultures. ….

…and very, very loud frogs. (I’ve put a Campervanmatters tweet up with a recording of them…forgive the abysmal filming! It’s the first attempt at putting video on the blog.)

We pulled over by this lake astonished at the din from their mating.

Our destination was the village of Gorno Pole.

We were staying at the Wild Farm where Beti and her husband Nickolai and their four children have lived and farmed for over 20 years. It’s a big organic farm with around 700 cows which they raise for beef. We discovered when we got there that the couple have also very recently become reality TV stars in Bulgaria since they took part in ‘Fermata’ (The Farm).

Bulgaria’s new reality TV star – Beti from Wild Farm

Beti and Nicholai were the ones setting farm challenges to farmers and celebrities in the series which attracted over 1 million viewers per episode hence the reason why she is now finding herself in the odd position being asked for selfies from total strangers when she travels within Bulgaria.

Gorno Pole really is very remote. The village has just 59, mostly elderly, inhabitants.  Most of the young people have moved to the city or abroad to find work.

Here’s the main square of the village…the building on the right is the shop though it’s hard to tell that from the outside.

It only opens in the mornings.

The shop keepers on the way to open up

Judging from the way locals gathered outside in the mornings, it looks like the shop also serves as a sort of community centre for the village and maybe a mediation centre too judging by the heated exchanges we overheard as we passed one morning. It was most likely a row over why one man’s donkey was grazing on a patch normally used by another man’s goats, we were told later.

But the striking feature of the village  was the number of derelict houses….beautiful stone buildings with traditional tiled roofs, all tumbling to the ground.

The problem is that many are impossible to sell for renovation because there could be 50 or more family owners with a share in the same house. So the willing buyer faces a lengthy and potentially costly task even to get to the first base of finding who has authority to sell.

We heard this is a problem not just in this part of the country but in the centre of cities  in Bulgaria where properties with multiple owners have scattered far and wide.

Ivo was lucky. He and his wife came to Gorno Pole because they wanted to raise their young family in the country. They came close to buying one house in the village but discovered at the 11th hour, their ‘seller’ owned just one fifteenth of the property. They pulled out but luckily found another house next door with just one owner. They are doing it up by themselves bit by bit, a story he is telling in a blog called Happyrhodopes.blogspot.com which is in Bulgarian but with the photos and the sometimes weird Google translation, you get the gist of their ‘Good Life’ story.

Before coming to Gorno Pole, Ivo’s career was spent working on vulture conservation projects so he was the ideal person ….

….to guide us to this spot on the mountainside where we saw vultures nesting in the cliffs and, rising up the thermals in front of us, fly overhead…

….including this rare sight, an Egyptian vulture back from Africa to nest.

In the valley below we could see the sweep of the Arda river where during the Balkan war in 1912, after the border with Greece was redrawn, some 2000 women and children trying to return to Bulgaria were killed by the pursuing army of the Ottoman Empire ….

Also in sight is the closest town  to Gorno Pole. It’s Madzharovo, once a prosperous mining town with 10,000 inhabitants…

…and now a ghost town since the closure of the mines in 1997.  Today there are just 600 inhabitants and we heard you can buy one of the apartments in these high rise blocks for about £1500.

Vultures and wolves:

Of course, it’s not strictly true that everyone is leaving Madzharovo. We met Vanya who came to live there very recently when she took up her new job at the Vulture Conservation Centre.

The centre’s work includes giving cows to local farmers on the basis that more stock =  more carcasses = more food for the vultures. But an ongoing challenge for them is persuading local farmers to shoot wolves (and claim the Government bounty for it) instead of putting out poison to kill them which has the result of killing off the feeding vultures. But even though the Government also pays farmers compensation if wolves do kill their livestock, the practice of poisoning is proving hard to stop.

We heard that all the local shepherds have stories of wolves brazenly walking into their herds and flocks and snatching a lamb or calf. We were also told how the cows when threatened by the wolves put their calves into the middle of a circle and run round them to keep the wolves at bay.

However when we went walking ourselves on a long hike through the mountains, it wasn’t the wolves we were worried about. We had enough assurances that they are not interested in attacking people. Instead, we were advised to watch out for the fierce sheepdogs.

Beti was more sanguine. ‘Just throw stones at them. The dogs hate the stones’.

Ivan, the shepherd we met on the hillside, didn’t seem as confident about our ability to protect ourselves.

He was eating his lunch when we walked past him but he called out to us to stop and we understood enough to know from his sign language that we shouldn’t go any further but should wait for him to finish. He then accompanied us down the mountain and safely past his dogs – named Hitler and Stalin – throwing stones at them himself to keep them away!

On our way back that evening, on a different hillside, we heard the tell tale tinkle of bells. A flock of sheep and goats was nearby. We stopped still, armed ourselves with stones, bracing ourselves for when the sheep dogs caught sight of us.  We could hear in the distance someone talking. It was the shepherd on his mobile phone, too deep in conversation to notice the fearty townies stranded and waiting for the signal from him that we were safe to pass….

…….and move into territory where the only animals we disturbed were cows from Wild Farm grazing on the mountainside…….or in this one’s case, feeding her calf.

In the village of Borislatvsi, Beti and her daughter Beti kindly introduced us to Georgi Cholakov. He was a miner but now in retirement devotes his time to building his own private museum where his collection of exhibits from the local region ranges from Roman jewellery to memorabilia from Bulgaria’s recent communist past and more.

He has a special room dedicated to the history of mining in the local area. This photo caught the eye. Camels? Yes, it seems camels were once used to shift loads at the mines before eventually being replaced by trucks.

Maybe for Stuart this was the most eye catching exhibit….it is a catfish caught in the lake nearby.

And they are still out there for the catching apparently. The previous week one of these river monsters capsized a fishing boat….or so they told us.

And also in Borislatvsi, we popped in to the little home factory where Hristo and his wife roast locally grown sesame seeds to make tahini. They also produce their own honey so we had a tasting.

The most delicious was the paste mixed with one quarter honey to three-quarters tahini which is delicious spread on spread or, as we tried it, eaten by the spoon load direct from the bowl.

Easter celebrations:

On Good Friday I joined Beti and her daughter in the small congregation at the Orthodox church service. Amidst the icons, the incense and the candles and the chanting, there was a very contemporary addition. The lay helper leading the priest in procession round the small church was holding aloft his smart phone to read the prayers he was chanting.

And back at the Wild Farm, it looked like our fellow guests were having a very traditional Easter Sunday morning. We arrived for breakfast to be greeted with ‘Christ is Risen’  and welcomed to join the egg fighting.

It looked like the object was to use the beautifully painted egg like a weapon and crack your opponent’s egg to win for yourself a lucky year or lucky day.

At least that’s what we think they said. So far we’ve picked up just enough Bulgarian to say the informal words for thank you (mersi) and goodbye (chao chao) which sound reassuringly familiar.

We’ve had a very relaxing week in the Rhodopes but tomorrow we will be saying ‘mersi’ and ‘chao chao’ to Beti and will be heading northwards to stay on a camp site in the Stara Zagora area and then onward north and west.

week 28 – greece week 5 – the third peninsula, corinth and heading for bulgaria

This week we travelled to the right hand finger of the Peloponnese and east to Argolis before heading north on a 450 mile journey to Kavala, one of our last stops in Greece before we cross the border to Bulgaria.

We visited the home of the Gods at Mount Olympus, saw the amazing Corinth canal and returned to Thermopylae where we wild camped beside a bankrupt hotel that now provides a temporary home for Syrian refugees.

Leaving Gythio:

While we’d spent few days close to Gythio, we never actually got to see the town. Such was our level of sloth that we didn’t budge from the beachside campsite. Even the van was chilled out….it refused to start when we were trying to leave which meant unpacking the boot to get at the engine…

..and giving this gadget its first airing on the trip. It’s a power pack which comes with its own jump leads. It started the van straightaway and we headed off to get to the right hand finger of the Peloponnese.

We followed the coast past this ruined ship…

…and through miles and miles of orange orchards…

…to this Gibraltar-like rock. It’s Monemvasio, linked to the mainland by a causeway.

We climbed the hill leading to the old town spotting a peregrine falcon on the way…

….and a great surprise, bumped into Nadia, Gunte, Ella and Blackie, our friends from Koroni.

Monemvasio is a beautifully restored Ottoman town. Everything is picture perfect with it’s narrow cobbled streets now crammed with smart bars and restaurants….

..and colourful blooms amid the ruins…

…and beautiful views over the red tiled roofs of the Ottoman homes.

We didn’t stop for long though. After a farewell coffee with our friends, we set off on our journey – our ultimate destination as yet unknown. Our only plan was to find a Greek village somewhere near the border with Bulgaria where we could insinuate ourselves into some family’s Easter celebrations.

At least that was the plan.

Our first stop was at the east coast village of  Leonidio on a route which took us across the most isolated countryside we’d seen since coming to Peloponnese. There was scarcely a house and on the two-hour journey we passed just two cars and one donkey.

Nearing the top of the steep slopes overlooking Leonidio, we thought we were driving into a forest fire….

…but we were driving into cloud…..

…or maybe sea fog. It was a challenging drive down. The steep switchback turns left the wheels of the van burning from the heat of the brakes for about an hour after we finally reached our beachside campsite…

…which had the oldest olive tree we’ve seen so far.

Leonido is becoming a really popular place with climbers…at least that’s what we heard from the two Yorkshire men we got talking to at the nearby taverna. They were there to tackle these limestone cliffs overlooking the village.

And continuing our big shunt northwards, our next stop was at a campsite near Nafplion. It’s in the guidebooks as one of the prettiest towns in Greece. It’s also a big cruise stop which explained the number of Americans wearing naval hats we met climbing the many, many steps up to the Venetian fortress overlooking the town.

Up top we paid the 8 euro a head entrance fee in, had a peek into the prison and eh, that was about it up there.

If the admission fee was payable at the bottom of the steps, we might have felt the ticket price included a cardio workout. As it was, we felt, well, a little stung.

So maybe that’s why when we arrived at the ancient site of Mycenae and got to the ticket booth, saw the queues and the prices we  turned round.

The car park was full of tourist coaches and the lines of visitors snaking round the ruins was off putting…

…so we kept going.

Now Mycenae, now you don’t.

We could easily have missed our next stop. Here it is looking like a scruffy wasteland ….

…..very different from how it looked when it opened in 1893 as this print in a nearby cafe depicts.

It’s the Corinth Canal and we headed there knowing it was something special but with only a vague idea of the story behind it. Um, wasn’t it built centuries ago in an amazing feat of engineering with all excavations done by hand? Eh, actually no. Got that one wrong.

Carving a canal from the Aegean to the Adriatic may well have been a dream for many of the ancient rulers but construction didn’t actually start on it until the 1890’s. By then the technology had advanced somewhat from slave labour having to scoop the earth out with their hands.

Up close, the canal is an impressive sight. It’s tall and narrow and steep and for those of us who prefer to be nearer the ground just  a tad nerve wracking to look into.

Eyes straight ahead, firm grip on handrail, terra firma is near….efharisto but am most definitely not interested in bungee jumping into the canal as have not as yet been certified mad.

Here’s the view out to sea….

…and into it’s depths.

It was a shame we didn’t see any ships go through it on the day we visited but nowadays it’s too small to accommodate most modern ships. You can go through it on a tourist cruise though. That’s definitely one for the bucket list.

This week we have mostly been eating…

More Greek salads. Fashion your feta whatever shape you like, it’s still delicious.

But coming in at number one this week is this dish…

It is gyros, the perfect fast food dish, made with chicken or pork with tomato, onion and  tzatziki sauce wrapped in warm pita and –  new  since my days Greek island hopping days as a 19-year old – a few chips thrown in for good measure. Truly a wondrous innovation.

And this week when wild camping with low stocks and a craving for carbs, I had a go at making my own flatbread. Just chuck together flour, a few dollops of yeast, some olive oil and water…..

….knead till it glues to your hands.

Wait for it to rise.

Then cook in the frying pan given no electricity means no oven. The result was perfectly edible flat bread…

…though the leftovers were still not good enough for the stray dog who adopted us that day.

Mount Olympus:

We stopped off in Litochoro, the town which acts as the base camp for hikers climbing Mount Olympus. It had the feel of a Swiss ski resort…..

….which wasn’t surprising given the peaks of the home of the gods are still snow covered.

Every summer thousands arrive to trek its peaks and stay overnight in the refuges up top.

And the scenery on Mount Olympus does look wonderful judging by the photos on display in the interpretation centre….

…but they look seriously challenging so in our case best left to the gods and experienced mountain climbers.

The Refugee Hotel at Thermopylae:

One of our overnight stops on the long road northwards was back at Thermopylae. We had already visited the hot springs on our way down to the southern Peloponnese and now heading back on a route with seemingly no open campsites it seemed a good place to spend the night. After all where better to wild camp than beside an endless supply of hot water?

But on our first visit, we had completely missed the fact that the building we’d seen in the distance  is a temporary home for Syrian refugees. It used to operate as the Aigli hot springs hotel but went out of business and had fallen into disrepair. Then last year, thanks to an initiative by the local governor, it’s doors were opened up to give shelter to some of the many refugees now trapped in Greece since the Balkan borders were closed to them.

Returning to Thermopylae, we drove close to the hotel to be near other motorhomes already set up for the night.

It’s new role as refugee shelter was obvious. The place was filled with families. Laundry was hanging out of every window, little boys were playing around the waterfall and nearby a boisterous football match was underway.

Another motorhome drove up alongside us.  It was a group of young Belgians, all taking part in a relay run to raise money for Syrian refugees. They had already been to visit one of the camps near Athens. I asked if they intended going into the hotel, half thinking we could visit with them. ‘No, we wouldn’t do that. We will only visit if we have contact with a representative there. We don’t want to intrude on their privacy or dignity.’

Point taken. Without an invitation, we didn’t venture closer but it was an incongruous situation – holidaymakers like us parked up to enjoy the sun and hot springs and next day free to carry on with our travels. Meanwhile the new residents of the hotel stay trapped in the Greek bottleneck, waiting for their asylum applications to be processed before they can find a safe and permanent home.

And finally:

We’ve changed our plans. Having got this far north, we’ve decided to keep going and spend Easter in Bulgaria. So we’ve only a few days left in Greece.

So head for the city or the beach? We opted for Kavala for another few days of sloth. We are getting good at that.

Week 27 – Greece Week 4 – The Mani

We are on our way home!

This week we passed the half way mark in our year-long trip and fittingly we spent it at the most southerly point we will reach in Europe.

That’s here at Cape Tenaro at the tip of the Mani peninsula in the southernmost point of mainland Greece.

That’s the middle finger of the southern Peloponnese. From now on as we head back up through Greece, we are journeying homewards.  It will be by the scenic route though via Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Faroes, Iceland, Germany, Holland and, eh, Harwich.

But back on the Mani…we  wild camped at Cape Tenaro for two nights and spent the days walking through the beautiful countryside and coastline. One route took us down a narrow rocky path to the lighthouse. The wind blowing in from the sea was fierce but by the lighthouse, sheltered by the rocks, it was a calm and warm sun trap.

The next day we took a circular route from the cape over hills covered with wild flowers…

…and through thick and highly scented yellow gorse down to the small, sandy cove of Porto Kagio.

This beautiful unspoilt area was our favourite part of the Mani and all the better for having the place virtually to ourselves.

That was especially the case at the Caves of Diros .  Judging by the number of boats lining up, the caves are thronged with visitors in high season.

But we took the 40-minute guided tour with just four others so it almost felt like we had this strange underworld to ourselves. The boatman silently paddled us along the subterranean river, through narrow corridors lined with head-skimming stalactites and weirdly shaped stalagmites.

The only sound was the noise of dripping water and the thud of his oar.

It was an extraordinary experience, maybe the best comparison is like those scenes in the 1960’s  film ‘Fantastic Journey’ where a submarine crew are shrunk down to be injected into a scientist and are navigating their way through his blood stream. Based on a true story I believe.

Heading off on our fantastic journey

And outside the caves, there was this statue of a heroine of the Mani to remind us what a brave and fierce lot Maniot people are.

Her statue commemorates the amazing feat of the Maniot women during the Greek War of Independence in 1826. The men were all off fighting on one front while the women were left behind to carry on with the harvest. So when a force of over 1,000 Turkish troops landed at the nearby bay in a bid to trap the men to the north, the women of the Mani succeeded in driving them out with stones, sticks and their sickles until reinforcements arrived.

And the Maniots were also the first in Greece to declare war on the Ottoman empire…

…as this poster in the Mani’s capital Areopoli shows. But the history of this isolated peninsula also has its fair share of serious craziness as witnessed by these towers.

They dot the whole peninsula, either as crumbling ruins…

….or expensive renovations or new builds following the style of the local architecture…

…like these new complexes blotting the landscape.

The towers were the homes for the Mani clans who spent four centuries waging brutal blood feuds against each other  hence the need to shelter behind the fortified high walls sometimes for years.

English writer Patrick Leigh Fermor writes about the ‘dark towers’ in his book written in the 1950’s ‘Mani – Travels in the Southern Peloponnese’. He aptly describes them as having the ‘hallucinating improbability of a mirage’.

We did pass through Kardamyli where Leigh Fermor lived for many years after being won over by its ‘quiet charm’. It didn’t have the same effect on us all these years later. On the day we visited, loud music was blaring out through a PA system to welcome back entrants in The Taygetos Challenge. The place was heaving so we didn’t hang around.

Our last stop on the Mani has been at the seaside town of Gytheio or to be more accurate at a campsite about 3km outside it. As I write, we still haven’t mustered up the energy to actually go to the town. Well after six months on the road, it was time to give the van a complete spring clean, there’s a good taverna a few short walk away …

…with great fish…..

….and plenty of kindling on the beach for a decent fire.

Next week we move on to the third finger of the Peloponnese.

Week 26 – Greece week 3 – still on the first ‘finger’ of the southern Peloponnese

This week we explored a bit more of  the Messinian peninsula, had the first swim in the sea for 2017 and then travelled north to finish the week in Kalamata, joining Greek families in their 25th March celebrations for National Independence Day. Well, watching them is probably a more accurate description…

Methoni:

From our base at a campsite in Koroni, we made a few day trips, like this one to the town of Methoni.

Driving towards it, we could see the ruins of the fortress stretching out to sea.

It’s a Venetian castle and together with the castle in Koroni they were called the ‘eyes of the Venice republic’ because of their strategic location, guarding the trade routes.

Admittedly the prospect of seeing  another Venetian castle hadn’t been exactly thrilling. Well, why travel all the way there to see one when we’ve a perfectly nice one where we were staying in Koroni….shamefully lazy or what?

It was good we hadn’t given into ‘castle fatigue’ or we would have really missed an unexpected treasure (to the uninformed visitor).

Gialova Lagoon:

But the highlight of the week was finding this place…

Actually, we didn’t find it for ourselves…we were about to leave Koroni and head off to the Mani peninsula – the second finger of the southern Peloponnese – when our fellow campers Nadja and Gunter told us about this beautiful lagoon.  You can’t leave without going there, they advised.

And so we did and we also agreed we’d keep a look out for the stray dog that they had be-friended when they stayed there. He had made such an impact on them, that they were now planning to return to look for him and hopefully ‘adopt’ him, assuming no owner turned up in the meantime.

We spent a day there and loved it so much we packed up from Koroni and returned to wild camp the following night.

Here we are close to the lagoon, just one big puddle to cross…

…and a short drive down the track…

…accompanied all the way by this little fellow who had been loitering by the bins in hope for new visitors (Nadja and Gunter will be pleased he’s still here we thought)…

..and we parked up beside Voidokilia Beach where the water was just about warm enough to brave the first swim of 2017.

And we had the place to ourselves….

….apart from the local wildlife.

The lagoon is a favourite stopping off point for migratory birds heading to Africa though not at the time we were there. Still when Stuart hiked up to the ruined castle overlooking the lagoon ….

A view of the castle on the walk up from the lagoon

…to get this panoramic shot..

…he also managed to get close enough (almost) to snap a colourful hoopoe, after many frustrating days of seeing them flit past the window of the van as we’ve been driving along the peninsula.

And just in time for dinner, along came this man from nearby Pylos who had spent the day in the lagoon diving for ‘gold of the sea’…

That’s this seaweed. He generously gave us a plateful and suggested we should eat it sprinkled with lemon juice. …

…which we did along with Nadja and Gunter who had returned to find Blackie as they now call him.

Yes, a very happy ending for this little dog so no more hanging around the bins waiting for scraps with strangers. He’s bonded well with their own dog Ella. The vet in Kalamata has given the all clear that there is no owner out there looking for their lost dog so he now has a new home albeit one on wheels for the next year or so!

Blackie and Ella make friends

It was great hearing about where they have travelled so far especially as it turns out they have stayed in some of the same places as us. They too had been to the winery in Sardinia where wine was dispensed by petrol pump; they stayed in the same overnight stop in Ragusa and had also been to Mount Etna though they got there a few weeks after Stuart and Callum had been skiing so they saw the eruptions first-hand.

Leaving the lagoon, the van made some strange screeching noises thanks to the caking of mud it received going through that puddle. Thankfully driving a few miles cleared it. We don’t want any problems between now and Bulgaria when it goes in for a big service.

We were sorry to leave the lagoon but we were heading to Kalamata where we hoped to join in some festivities to mark Greek Independence Day and also the Greek Orthodox religious festival of the Annunciation.

But apart from the closed shops and the flags flying to mark the occasion….

….the festivities were confined to family gatherings for celebratory meals in the harbourside restaurants.

So we adjourned to a nearby bar to celebrate with Guinness. No local beers on offer so it was either that or more Italian fizz.

…then it was back to the van,  tucked in between the yachts on the harbour…

….to watch the sunset…

… and sample the town’s most famous product.

Next stop we move on to the Mani peninsula.

Week 25 – Greece Week 2 – Ancient Olympia to Koroni

Stuart discovers Greece

This week we dropped the pace of travel a bit and for the most part stayed in the one spot on the Messinian peninsula.  That’s the left hand ‘finger’ of the three peninsulas which point southwards from the Peloponnese in mainland Greece.

The spot we chose was Koroni, a small harbour town between the Gulf of Messinia and the Ionian sea. It has a vibrant feel to it even though it was off season and there were few if any other tourists around.

Sitting at any of the harbour front bars, the views across the harbour to the Mani Peninsula – the second ‘finger’  –  were mesmerising…

…. like this one taken at sunset when the still snow capped peaks of the Taygetos mountains looked like a mirage.

Before settling at Koroni, we stopped off here…

…at a campsite beside Glifa beach with a view across the sea to Zakynthos, a peaceful spot where the nearest shop was in a village about 2 k away, a pleasant walk…

…which took us past olive groves….

…and orchards of lemon trees…

..and small farms…

…which were all in soft focus on our return journey thanks to the local shopkeeper who was in celebratory mood.

He’d just become a grandfather to twins and insisted we join him in toasting the new arrivals with ouzo and then more ouzo, washed down with wine and more wine.

We got plastered…

…and map drawing to describe where we were from became more challenging.

Despite my efforts at cartography, our host still thought we were from Holland.

Ancient Olympia:

Heading south down the peninsula, we stopped off at Ancient Olympia where it looked like the flame was out of control.

We had a wander around the ruins of the site where the Games were held every four years from 776 BC to 393 AD ….

…and saw the spot where the Olympic Torch is still lit every Games…

…and with the Spring flowers, it was a beautifully peaceful place for a stroll….

…and the fields of colourful blooms brought back good memories of London 2012 to Stuart.  Those wild flower meadows of London 2012 have only recently been replaced as his laptop screensaver by a fish. Sorry by The Salmon A fish in every country (plus one).

Camped up in Koroni:

Then finally we reached Koroni and the sun was shining so we decided to stay a while and do…..well…. not very much which is why this post is so much shorter than other weeks.

We’ve been exploring the town ….

.. and become regulars at Angelica bakery where she’s adept at ensuring you buy more than a loaf by insisting you smell what has just come out of the oven….so apple pies one day, cheese and spinach pies the next.

And walking up the cobbled lanes to the hill overlooking the harbour….

…there are the ruins of the Venetian Castle …

….with great views over the town below.

We’ve had some good food ….like this plate of grilled sardines…

….followed by a spoon sweet of delicious sweet grape preserve, served on a teaspoon with  yoghurt.

And back at the campsite, the Campervanamatters kitchen was producing more modest fare…

….like lunches of tsatski and salmon..

….and barbecues lit with olive pips….

….which make a very decent fire…

…leaving  leftovers for the local residents……

….and their children.

We also got to see some football…here’s  Koroni and Kalamata in action.

And by just staying put for a few days, there’s been time to crack on with the knitting project….still to be sewed together and dropped stitches recovered but almost there just as the sun is shining and the last thing we’ll need is a big woolly blanket.

And we’ve finally opened up the cribbage box but remembering the rules and doing the maths is making a muggins of us both…

There’s also been plenty of time for reading. The new page now added to the blog ‘Molly’s Book/DVD Club’ has some of the books read so far but any recommendations on a good read will be gratefully received.

So it’s been a very relaxed week and Koroni was the ideal spot for it.

Week 24 – Greece: Week 1 – Ioannina in northern Greece to the Peloponnese

This week we left Albania for Greece, passed the 10,000 mile marker in our trip so far and somehow managed to lose one of the windows in the van.

Goodbye Albania:

Our last task before leaving Albania was to spend the small amount of leks we had left which involved a quick trip to, um, Aldi in Gjirokaster – though an IP lawyer may find their branding strategy questionable – and then head for the  border….

DSC_4131

….where we bought a bunch of Mountain Tea from the seller at the passport barrier. We were really pleased to see him as we’d been wanting to find this tea we had enjoyed so often during our trip here.

This is what it looks like…..

DSC_4274

It’s botanical name is Sideritis or it is also named ironwort though Mountain Tea sounds a lot nicer. Just a couple of flowers from the stem brewed in boiling water makes a really satisfying cuppa.   I wonder could any of the Albanian farmers  currently engaged in the production of  cannabis be persuaded to switch to cultivating this plant for mass production? Nice idea though I guess there’s a lot more profit to be made from the ‘green gold’ crop.

We were sorry to leave Albania and at the risk of sounding like the  Skibereen Eagle ( the Irish local newspaper whose editorial 120 years ago sternly warned the Emperor of Russia they’d be keeping ‘an eye’ on him) we will be really interested in the outcome of the June elections. No doubt Rama and Basha will be quaking to hear that ‘Campervanmatters’ is ‘keeping an eye’ on the Albanian electoral process..

.And so here we are a few miles from the Albanian/Greek border and at a  rough estimate at least 20 minutes before Stuart first asks ‘What’s a Greek urn?’…

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….to which the response is ‘about 10 bob a week’ as all Morecambe & Wise fans will know.

Our first stop was in Ioannina in Northern Greece where we parked up at a campsite by the shores of Lake Pamvotis.

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Stuart spotted a Great Crested Grebe…

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….and got talking to a local fisherman who was sleeping by the shore overnight in the hope of catching a carp. Stuart chatted to him about the chances of catching something (good but you can’t eat them as the lake is too polluted) and the state of the Greek economy (terrible and too many taxes).

It’s probably not the first conversation like this we will have in Greece over the coming weeks as the countdown continues to the July date when Greece has to make a multi billion debt repayment to its bailout creditors.

And in a cafe in town, we also had the first of – I expect – very many Greek salads.

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It is entirely possible that like our experience with peak-tagine in Morocco we will reach peak-Greek salad, but this first one with tangy feta and crisp tomatoes, onions, olives and peppers was delicious served alongside souvlaki of ‘grilled sheep’.  How is it that somehow it sounds more palatable when it says ‘lamb’ on the menu?

And to finish, we headed up to the Byzantine Museum and in the cafe had the lusciously delicious dessert of ekmek to finish. It’s made of layers of shredded pastry soaked with syrup and topped with sweet cream.

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We had a wander around the museum grounds but as we are both a bit ‘centro historico-ed’ and ‘museum/castled’ out just now, we didn’t budge from the cafe. Call it a mini break from culture.

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Stuart looking like a man whose just been given a ‘pass the museum pass’

Maybe we will come back and see all Ioanninna’s attractions more thoroughly. With its lakeside setting, it does look like a nice town to come in summer .

It also has a rich history because of its links with this man who we came across in Telepena in Albania where this photo was actually taken….

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He’s the Ottoman Ali Pashe – a nasty piece of work by all accounts (including Lord Byron who met him when he visited his court in Ioannina) due to his particular penchant for roasting his enemies.

His brutal reign finally came to an end on this island out in the middle of the lake which we were sort of tempted to visit but then…..well it was still raining heavily, a DVD in the van beckoned and we were still on that no culture mini break.

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And the rain continued as we travelled on from Ioannina through Greek landscape which definitely doesn’t make it to the tourist brochures. The countryside was flat and dotted with empty industrial units and half built houses.

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But even on a grey, rainy day the rock pinnacles of Meteora rising up ahead of us in Central Greece were jaw-droppingly spectacular.

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They tower above the village. The peaks are impressive in themselves but then you get closer and see that on top of them are there’s a monstery like this one..

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Actually there were about 20 of them but only a few are still inhabited. Also access is a bit easier than it was when the monks used to climb up a ladder, or worse still, be hauled up in a net.

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In the gap between showers, we climbed the stone carved stairs up the hill side…

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..to reach the top and visit two of the monasteries…..

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….accompanied all the way by this doggy companion who finally moved from his chosen spot in the road to join us on our hike.

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Thermopyle:

And back into the cultural foray, we set off for Thermopyle – or Thermo Pile as our GPS insisted on calling it – to see this fine specimen of manhood…

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Sorry –  photo mixup there. I mean this fine specimen….an easy mistake I’ll grant you.

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This well honed  warrior is the Spartan King Leonidas who in 480 BC tried valiantly, but ultimately unsuccessfully, to hold the narrow coast pass at Thermopylae against the Persian army.

And the photo above that is of Stuart bravely bathing in the exceedingly hot springs there.

Actually the brave thing wasn’t getting into the springs – the water was like a bath. The challenging part was dis-robing in the van and then legging it across the car park in the cold and rain.

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The current was so strong, I had to grab onto holes in the rocks to stop myself being washed down river  and into the arms of the Czech couple skinny dipping downstream.

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Memo to self though – when bathing in sulphur springs, do remember to remove any jewellery…these rings were silver before I got in the water.

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Delphi: 

Smelling faintly of rotten eggs but feeling exhilarated by our hot dip, we set off driving to the centre of the world. At least that’s how the Ancient Greeks viewed Delphi.

On our route it was just beyond this rainbow…hurrah, the rain was finally stopping…..

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and located high on  Mount Parnassus with beautiful views over valleys filled with olive groves.

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We joined the hordes of fellow tourists and followed the Sacred Way past the Temple of Apollo where the Pythia or priestess perched on a tripod and stoned from inhaling natural gases would deliver advice or prophecies to all comers,  usually in such cryptic language that the meaning was open to many interpretations.

Though apparently the Oracle didn’t pull any punches with our fit warrior friend Leonidas. She predicted a sorry end for him when he sought advice before going into battle with the Persians at Thermopyle. Clearly not big into motivational speaking then, these oracles.

And up beside the stadium where the Pan Hellenic games were held, it was selfie time…

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and while I went into the museum and thought how happy would you be if you were the one to excavate these boys….

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..or tres heureux as the French archaeologists who did find them would have said…

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And meanwhile Stuart captured his second bird of the week, perched on the Treasury of Delphi. Here it is, a Rock Nut Hatch he reckons but is open to suggestions…

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We got back to the campsite we were staying at near the modern village of Delphi just in time for this magnificent sunset…

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…and also to meet up once again with Gill and Chris, fellow travellers we last met in the Sahara.

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And we had some serious van envy inside their very plush van complete with telly and fixed bed….poor Molly looked distinctly shabby by contrast.

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Of course, it didn’t help that we’ve now lost one of the van’s windows. We didn’t quite close the hinge on the roof side window so somewhere on the road from Delphi, there’s a piece of plastic this shape…..

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We didn’t hear a thing so only realised there was a piece missing in the van when we pulled over to a lay-by for a tea break.

Here’s the van now patched up with plastic bags and unless we manage to find a replacement and find a way to get it shipped to us, we will just have to manage with a bit extra air conditioning for the next 6 months of our trip.

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The good news about the van though is that six months in, we discovered while trying to work out how to fit four people into the van for a meal, that with a bit of handbrake manoeuvring, the driver seat swivels round in the same way as the passenger seat.

So now while I have the couch cum bed to recline in when we park up, Stuart has his own cosy den….

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A beer, a book, toasty slippers, what more does a man in a van want?

Well, maybe some sunshine would be good. We’ve had 5 days of rain this week so we are heading further south now in search of some warmth and light where ideally we can find a spot to stay put for a couple of weeks.

Leaving Delphi, we headed for coastline and this is getting more like the Greece we are looking for….

…slower traffic….ah yes, here’s the stock image of a overladen cart no 157…

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…and isolated island retreats….

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and not long after crossing over the bridge near Patras…

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….we reckon we will find the retreat we are looking for in the Peloponnese.

PS  Stuart’s beer gallery is now a little more up to date

Week 23 – Albania (week 2)

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Deliveroo Albanian style – lamb for lunch I think

In our second and final week in Albania we had without doubt the most challenging drive on the worst road we’ve experienced yet in our five or so months travelling.

But it was also the week we drove through some of the most spectacular scenery we’ve seen on our trip so far.

Our first stop was at this desolate place….

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It’s just outside the town of Elbasan which is known for its home grown tobacco and which is sold in enormous quantities…

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The area of steel mills just outside of town is a now vast wasteland.

Back in the days when the communist dictator Hoxha was cosying up to China after falling out with the Russians, it was called the ‘Steel for the Party’ and the 150 hectare site employed up to 12,000 people.

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But now the communist regime which propped this place up has gone and so are all the factories which have been left derelict.

Driving around this mini town past the skeletons of steel works, it looked like just one or two the units were still operating.

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So that was a gloomy  but weirdly interesting detour before we headed on to another communist regime favourite:

Lake Ohrid:

We had booked into one of the few hotels still standing there after a Government cull of the illegal builds which had sprung up in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 collapse of communism. Some  22 hotels were forcibly demolished to try to restore some planning order to the lakeside area.

We knew we were getting close when we saw the eel sellers by the roadside…

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Looking at these snaps which I took as we trundled by in the van,  it sort of looks like we’ve pulled these lads in to a photographic studio and set them up against a canvas backdrop.

But no, with this deep still lake framed by snow capped mountains Lake Ohrid really is this picturesque.

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Korce:

And on we travelled to Korce with its impressive Orthodox cathedral…

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…and home of this square-jawed hero of the revolution.

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It’s another triumph of the Socialist Realist style of art. Here he is all chiselled features and eyes narrowed with determination to achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat. ‘Just mind the hair comrades.’

A controversial development in the town is the old Ottoman bazaar which is being done up with EU funding. But apparently some 200 or so local traders with stalls that filled the entire bazaar up to recently were cleared out as the city seeks to gentrify it.

There are only a few units filled so far including one called ‘The Beatles’, decorated with many photos of the boys, and this metal working shop which we thought would have some wonderfully, authentic local craft work….

 

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Well maybe some but not all. We were a bit crestfallen when we looked more closely at the miniature metal bucket we bought for the van and found a barcode. Imported from some factory in China maybe? Still, it’s a sale. We were the tourists and that was the tat we were prepared to pay for.

And this co-operative cafe in the bazaar was also up and running and served good coffee …

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and we met Gloria who works there. 

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She told us they would be serving traditional Albanian food that evening as there was going to be a public concert in the bazaar. We learned later the festivities were to mark the 1st. of March as the start of Lent for the Orthodox church and a week later for Muslims. (The religious tolerance in Albania where 70% of the population and 20% is impressive from what we’ve seen.)

We came back to the Ottoman Bazaar that evening with Korce locals Miri and his wife Elma…(introduced to us by Dorina who we met in Tirana).

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..who joined us for dinner which was a hearty and very flavoursome lamb stew and a corn bread side dish.

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Then it was time for the party in the square which attracted a good crowd for the traditional Albanian singing and dancing .

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Korce likes a party we heard and (memo to selves), we decided we would come back one day  for the Korce annual beer festival. Stuart is now a fan of Korce  Black – a new star in his Beer Gallery.

The Korce party  had also attracted a group of Greek motorhomers as we found next day when we travelled into the countryside to the village of Voskopoja.

We hadn’t seen any other motorhomers in Albania, then five come all at once..

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Voscopoja

This small village registers on the tourist map because it used to be a key commercial trading centre in the Ottoman Empire. It is also famous for its orthodox churches – though only a few still left standing. There is no UNESCO protection for conservation of the sites here and chatting to Rafail here…

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..it sounds like it is a struggle to ensure what’s left will be preserved.

He lives in the village and works as a private guide. He approached us as we parked up which was lucky because without him we wouldn’t have been able to see inside one of the only orthodox churches from the Ottoman period still intact.

It was all locked up and the priest was away, but Rafail was able to track down the priest’s wife who unlocked the church  for us so he could show us around.

We weren’t allowed take any photos inside but at least the frescoes were in better shape than these grafitti-covered ones outside.

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Graffiti on the frescoes outside the church

And Rafail also introduced us to Lola …

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..who was extremely hospitable and was very proud of her hotel. We weren’t staying in the village but she was very keen to show me around all the rooms.

Here’s the cozy lounge area……

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Cheers Lola! One glass of raki is all it costs for some free publicity in this blog…

The worst road journey ever….I mean ever:

Some of the roads in Albania have been pretty bad but the one we had to take to get to Farmasotira, an agri-business offering tourist accommodation in the south of Albania, was unbelievably bad. The heavy rain made conditions even harder.

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The road was made up of a series of steep, narrow hairpin bends, made worse because of the potholes and mud slides.

And the photo above shows a section where the tarmac had disappeared..

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..it had slipped 10 feet down the slope.

We were  mighty mighty relieved to finally get to the idyllic setting of Farmasotira just as it was getting dark.

In the morning sunshine we could see the place properly. It’s a unique tourism set up in Albania, we gathered from Nida, who has been building it up brick by brick over the last 18 years with her farmer husband.

So in addition to their business as farmers of cattle..

..and fish…this is their trout farm

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…they offer accommodation in these cosy wooden chalet-style bungalows..

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Here’s Nida.

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We didn’t meet her husband but we tasted (and bought) some of the excellent Merlot he makes. And they offer really good home cooked food in the farmhouse restaurant. Our dinner the night when we arrived was lamb slowly roasted served with tzatsiki and salad and was most welcome after the awful journey there.

It was a great location and imagine it would be a great spot in the summer to go hiking in the nearby hills or maybe just sit in the sunshine and just look at them.

The countryside nearby is spectacular too. We reckon the route that took us from Farmasotira in the east cross country and up to Tepelene pass the snowcapped Gramos mountains which ran like a high wall alongside us for long stretches of the way was some of the most amazing vistas we have seen on this trip so far.

 

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And on to the tourist magnet of Berat:

We’d been saying how some of the towns we passed through in Albania had the feel of Morocco to them what with the markets and the continuous hustle and bustle of people.

The roads certainly reminded us of Morocco as we were sharing them not only with cars (mostly Mercedes seemingly without indicators) but with carts and donkeys.

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And like Morocco we regularly passed by roadside sellers offering dates, bread, olives and olive oil.

But unlike Morocco where we managed to pick up a speeding fine the police here always wave us through with their green lollipop stick. Is there is a blanket pass for tourists? It seemed so because the police are absolutely everywhere, continually pulling people over to check documents.

The comparison with Morocco continued at the tourist magnet and Unesco Heritage town of Berat.

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The town is famous for its white Ottoman era houses.

We walked up the steep hill to Berat castle and within minutes had attracted an unofficial ‘guide’ Vasil….

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..who ambled alongside us helpfully pointing out in a mix of English, Albanian and Italian the main sights and, his particular fixation, exactly where we should stand to take the best photos. And he was as dogged as any wedding photographer in making us to pose amidst all the antiquities while he – having grabbed Stuart’s camera – shinned up masts..

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…and clambered along high walls..

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to get photos like this…

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Believe me if we could have wrestled the camera back off him to stop him climbing up where there was a sheer drop the other side, we would have done it. But Vasil was a man with a mission which if I understood him correctly was to earn enough to emigrate to Greece.

 

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Before leaving Berat we had a wander through the Saturday morning flea market…

 

DSC_5852…and on the way back to town we met this man heading home to make his dinner.

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We know for sure this little lamb is heading for the oven because Stuart asked in the international language of mime i.e. questioning look whilst moving hand across throat in razor cutting action and got a happy grin and nod in response.

Our lunch was more instant.. cheese and figs from the market stall…

 

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..and back in the town byrek from the bakery. That’s  pastry filled with cheese or spinach..

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..which is a handy snack to eat on the go.

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We left Berat after a stint watching an intensely competitive dominoes match between the local old boys.

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We were off to visit the Roman city of Appollonia which was in the UK newspapers recently with reports of a successful raid by Albanian police on smugglers trying to export over 200 artefacts from the site.

We passed more of Hoxha’s bunkers on the way. We’d passed plenty on the roads already…and some like this one near Lake Ohrid have been jazzed up.

 

 

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But they are so heavy and most are too expensive to move so they are likely to just stay there, reminding Albanians of a terrible period in their history when Hoxha isolated the country from the world.

We went in for a closer look..

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You get the idea of the kind of character Hoxha was from a story in the website Atlas Obscura. Apparently the prototype for the bunkers  was built in the 1950s and the chief engineer assured Hoxha that it could withstand a full assault from a tank. Hoxha decided to test it with the engineer inside.

Vlore – the city with a place in history:

Vlore has a  big place in Albania’s history as it was where a group of partisans declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912.

That explains this statue we saw on the way into town.

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But at the Muzeu Kombetar which is the actual house where the declaration was made, I was probably more interested in hearing from Albiona (named because her Dad is crazy about English football) about the town’s more recent history.

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Albiona

 

Albiona was a teenager when Albania descended into anarchy in mid-1990’s after the collapse of corrupt and fraudulent pyramid schemes which saw huge numbers of people lose their entire life savings.

She recalls that even her own family had to have a kalishnakov rifle at home to protect themselves from intruders. To be fair, kalishakovs were going very cheap at the time as all of Hoxha’s arms magazines had been plundered after the fall of Communism. And she talked to me too of the tragedy that hit her family in 1997 when her cousin, his wife and their one-year old son drowned with the ‘Otranto’ ship carrying Albanians trying to escape to Italy was hit by accident by an Italian naval vessel.

And life now? Law and order has been restored but Albiona echoes many of the people we have spoken to during our visit here that life is very hard and many are still looking for a way out of the country to make a future for themselves.

And our last stop in our travels round Albania took us the other tourist magnet, aside from Berat, that of Gjirokaster. Here’s the view from the castle which was worth going to see though I have to admit by this stage, I was starting to feel castled-out and ready for a change.

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After two weeks we are now looking forward to getting back to the van properly. We couldn’t find any open campsites in Albania and didn’t feel confident about wild camping.

So apart from Farmasotira we’ve stayed in hotels the whole time. Most have been really excellent and a very high standard as well as being very reasonably priced. Actually all have been good quality apart from the one we stayed at in Tepelena which was shitet.

Eh no, that’s not a typo – as Dave commented on last week’s blog – shitet that means ‘for sale.’

Here’s the one we stayed in:

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Inside was everything you’d expect from a communist regime hotel complete with institutional corridor..

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..lumpy mattress and dodgy plumbing.

Today we head for the Greek border and hopefully to find some open campsites.

We’ve loved our time in Albania and especially enjoyed meeting people like Ani, Dorina, Miri and Elma. Now it’s time for country number 7.

PS So Mount Etna has recently erupted after Stuart and Callum went skiing on her. Coincidence? Hmm.

Week 22 – Albania (week 1)

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We’ve had one week in Albania so far and maybe it’s the effect of Lola’s plum raki but I’m feeling a bit misty-eyed at just how warm and welcoming the people here have been to us.

We have met so many thoughtful, kind, educated, well informed, hard working people, all trying to build a future for themselves and their families. But it seems that widespread corruption and political game playing by many of the same faces in power under the Communist regime means that life in Albania is still hugely difficult for all but the very rich…..and we’ve already seen quite a few of those gliding by in blacked out top of the range cars.

 

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Seeing the shiny AMG 6.3 litre twin turbo Mercedes parked up beside us while we had a coffee in Durres, it was hard not to wonder if the two young men in shades and leather jackets were players in the biggest news story in Albania right now – the massive production of cannabis. Apparently, some of the plantations dotted all over the country can be seen on Google earth yet somehow still manage to escape detection by the police or the politicians…..unless the TV cameras are around of course.

Our week here started with:

Van Trouble:

Within minutes of disembarking from the ship at Durres, one of the pipes to the van radiator started leaking.  We managed to get to the hotel we’d booked on the seafront before the temperature gauge went off the scale.

Stuart headed off into town to find a mechanic and did what you learn at your mother’s knee when in trouble in a strange place – ask a policeman. Luckily the officer just happened to be in mid-conversation with Renato, a local mechanic who fixed the leak and then insisted on buying us coffee –  our first taste of Albanian hospitality.

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Durres itself is a busy seaside resort. Here’s the view from our hotel. (We couldn’t find any open campsites on Albania).

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The town is creaking with history – much to the inconvenience of developers who want to build shiny skyscrapers on top of newly discovered Byzantine walls.

This site is at the centre of controversy as building works have been halted just now while the conservationists do their best to preserve the ruins.

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At first glance we thought this place was a historic site too, a Roman temple perhaps?

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Eh no. It’s a primary and high school and was built just three years ago. Most of the staff are recruited from the US so all teaching is in English. But only the privileged few can afford to send their children here.

Durres was also a good base for a day trip to the Karavastja Lagoons –  a popular destination for British birdwatchers apparently.

We headed across the hard sand beach…

 

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and got to the lagoon…

 

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It was just us two..

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..and this old boy making something we couldn’t work out…

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..and this buffalo cow – at least we think it might be one. Apparently the lagoons are known for them.

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But the dalmatian pelicans were too far away to see, even with Stuart’s new zoom lens…

Still it was worth going to the lagoons as we saw some of rural Albania on the drive there and back. We went through the small town of Divijaka…

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….which was pretty colourful…

Albania’s current PM Edi Rama when Mayor of Tirana orchestrated a programme to repaint the old grey communist era blocks of flats in bright colours. (He gives a good TED talk about this). Maybe this was part of the same programme?

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And in the countryside, there were some traditional houses still to be seen……

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…but mostly new builds like this dotted everywhere.

 

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And in our first venture into the countryside, we saw some serious litter. Piles and piles of rubbish on the grass verges, plastic bags caught on the hedgerows.

Lunch at the lagoon was this dish of fresh fish.

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Back in Durres, we had another great experience of Albanian hospitality.

We met Ani  for coffee and a chat, taking time to meet us despite the fact she was having to dash off afterwards to sit an exam for the university course she is taking in public relations.

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We were put in touch with Ani by our Kosovan friend Danny who is based in London. He’s been the networking king for this trip, setting us up with people to meet and suggesting places we should see. (Thanks Danny – we owe you a pint!)

Before leaving Durres we had to visit  the pink villa once owned by the best named king ever – King Zog.

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The palace was ransacked during riots in 1997 but it was still worth a trip up to see the views over the city.

The steep hill down was pretty hairy.

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Tirana time:

Tirana has changed incredibly since the fall of communism in 1991.

Under Enver Hoxha, the paranoid and psychotic dictator, who kept Albania in political and cultural isolation for 41 years, only the elite could live in the capital and only communist party officials had cars. Now it’s population has increased 5 times to over 1 million plus….

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Here’s a youthful looking Uncle Enver as he liked to be called.

If driving in Morocco was a challenge, well at least there were donkeys and carts in the mix to slow things down. Here, it’s like wacky races. Luckily Stuart is rising to the challenge.

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We have also been enjoying the surprised expressions on the faces of pedestrians when we pull up at the zebra crossing to let them cross. In Tirana the technique for crossing the street, pedestrian crossing or not, is to take a deep breath and go for it trusting that the driver values his bumper more than you. We learned how by watching Dorina, a lawyer who not only works in the city, but is brave enough to cycle around it.

Dorina is another contact of Danny’s (and btw is Ani’s sister-in-law) and she took us to a French cafe in the Block area, once forbidden to anyone but Communist party officials and now the trendiest buzziest part of the city.

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And by coincidence, while we hadn’t managed to see inside King Zog’s villa in Durres, we got the next best thing.

Three years ago Dorina got married in Durres and she and her new husband managed to blag past the security guard to have some wedding photos taken inside the villa.

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Communist history:

We wanted to know more about Albania’s communist history and so headed to BunkArt2 – part museum and part art installation.

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It is located in an ex-nuclear bunker, intended to shelter Hoxha and his ministers but never used…

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It was hugely interesting and informative but eerie and depressing at the same time. We were glad to get out.

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We headed straight to a bar in the Block for a drink and to be among shiny happy people.

Loud music was playing and a good song came on. We asked the waitress what it was called so we could download it later. ‘Hang on I will shazam it’ and off she went with her mobile to identify the tune for us.  The contrast with what we had just seen in BunkArt 2 about life for Albanians under Hoxha was staggering. Firstly we were sitting drinking in an area of the city once reserved only for the Communist elite. It was not even marked on the city map so not only were ordinary Albanians forbidden to enter the Block, they didn’t know where it was.

Second, the waitress had a mobile like practically everyone in Albania now. Under the Hoxha communist regime up to the 1990s only senior party officials were even allowed had a land line. If you were caught trying to pick up radio signals from across the border in Italy or Yugoslavia, you faced prison for sure but your extended family would also be punished with prison or labour camp.

And then there was the music being played in the bar – it was a catchy euro pop number. For the music geeks – that’s you Steve! – the song was ‘Ecoutez, Repetez by Touch & Go. Under Hoxha’s regime, any musician whose songs revealed any traces of Western pop influence went to prison.

Then there were the horrors of how Hoxha kept Albania isolated from the world, like:

– the border guards – supported by trained dogs – who operated a shoot to kill policy to stop any Albanians trying to escape to freedom..

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Art installation commemorating the many thousands killed trying to cross the barbed wire fence which marked Albania’s borders

..the continual surveillance over the population by the feared Sigurimi secret police….

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aided by a network of volunteer spies. It was said one in every three was a spy

—bunkerisation – Hoxha’s crazed paranoia about possible invasion by the US or USSR which led to the proposed construction of 700,000 bunkers throughout the country where individual families and military had to go in case of an invasion by unnamed enemies…(less than 200,000 were actually built)

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The only Western films Albanians saw were those starring Norman Wisdom (seriously!) and in art the only style permitted was Socialist Realist.

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like these square jawed heroes depicted in paintings in Tirana’s art gallery

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But this Socialist Realist painting of Hoxha resulted in a prison sentence for the artist. Why?

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…because he made the mistake of painting it so the artist was sitting down while the great leader was standing.
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To learn more, we booked some time with Gjergji of Albanian Trip.

He showed us memorabilia collected from the communist era

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It was fascinating to hear his own experiences of life under communism. He remembers as a young school boy being brought to pay respects after Hoxha’s death in 1985. Like these school girls,   it was eminently sensible to look as distraught as possible at the passing of Uncle Enver….

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He also remembers the excitement when the first nine storey building was constructed  in Tirana after the fall of communism…

It was the first to have a lift so he and his school friends travelled across town to try it out.

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Nine stories was a big deal because under  the communist regime, all blocks of flats were the same – five storeys and no higher.

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And inside, everyone had exactly the same furniture. Here we are in a reconstruction of a typical Communist flat sitting room in BunkArt1 …

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So the Tirana we enjoyed this week was vastly different to the bleak city of less than 30 years ago. We found it to be a buzzing, lively place, with great bars, cafes and restaurants.

We saw some of the blocks which been repainted in bright colours…

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…and more modern architecture. Getting closer to it seemed like a good photo opportunity..

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Though it did look a bit odd to the lady with her shopping coming up behind me. Was I ok, she wanted to know, as she saw me pinned to the glass. I had to lead her round the glass box and introduce her to the photographer to reassure her I wasn’t unhinged.

Now with more money sloshing about (though it seems not yet reaching the vast majority of ordinary workers), the main plaza Skanderbeg Square is undergoing massive reconstruction. Here’s Stuart trying to persuade the security guard to let him have a closer look and find out where the trees being planted there come from (you can the man out of forestry but etc etc).

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But it was near this empty street that we thought we were seeing the clearest sign of the seismic change in Albania post-communism. See — see this empty street where this couple were taking the opportunity to get some really unique photos for their wedding album?

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It is currently cordoned off to cars because the opposition party have erected a protest tent right…

..here’s the opposition leader Lulzim Basha in full flow..

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You didn’t need to know any Albanian to make out the words ‘Rama’, ’cannabis’ and ‘crimininal’

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Wow we thought – just 30 years ago, you would be sent to prison for 10 years for complaining about the quality of a tomato. And here we are seeing a public protest right next to the prime minister’s office!

Well that was us being naive. It turns out  Basha’s  tent is all part of the continuing political game between the democrats and the socialists. Expect more of the same as the general elections in June get closer.

We have a second week here in Albania before we must leave for Greece and we plan to visit much of the more rural areas across this fascinating country.

Week 21 – Leaving Sicily and across the boot of Italy to Bari

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Every day is laundry day in Naples

This week started with my return from a few days visiting family to find Stuart looking slightly singed from his volcano-hopping and suffering more than a little from island fever.

He was very keen to move on from Sicily after nearly three weeks here so we stayed just one night in the campsite in Catania before heading north to Palermo to catch the ferry to Salerno in mainland Italy.

But we couldn’t leave without tasting the city’s most famous dish. That’s Pasta alla Norma (apparently named after the opera Norma by Catania-born composer  Bellini) and is made with tomatoes, fried aubergines, basil and dollops of ricotta salata cheese.

And as it was Valentine’s Day, I had a good excuse to get out of the ‘pink task’ of cooking.  We didn’t have to go too far. Luckily the restaurant at Campsite Jonio  was really good and, most unlike the usual couple-crammed Valentine’s night event, empty of customers apart from us two.

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Pasta alla norma

Then it was time to start the journey out of Sicily. We headed north to Palermo where our overnight stop was in a parking area attached to a motorhome dealership.

It wasn’t pretty but it had electric hook up, hot showers and it was a short bus ride from the centre so suited us fine.

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The priority was to find somewhere we could print out our ferry tickets. Only hard copies of the booking email would suffice for Grimaldi Lines apparently.

Once in the centre, we followed a trail of phone and fax shops, asking if they could oblige us and each one pointing us further and further down the narrow street till finally we reached a small dark and tatty office where the wall was stickered with handwritten signs offering cheap international calls and the back room was lined with individual cubicles with PCs where customers pay for internet access. Overhearing us explain once again our request to print out our tickets, a head popped up from one of the cubicles and we were greeted enthusiastically by a woman who was clearly very keen to chat to other English speakers.

She was from Sicily but now settled for many years in Australia and was only back here for a short period, she told us, to try and persuade her elderly mother to move back with her because to her mind there was no future for the city or, warming to her theme, Italy. ‘The days of Tuscany holidays are ovah, ovah…it’s not just corrupt to the bone. It’s corrupt to the marrow….” And, seemingly genuinely bewildered at why we were in Palermo at all, she asked ‘What are you doing here? Did you not do any research?” she asked.

Descending into stage whispers which would have been comic but for the content, she said all the shops round us had no real business, they were all, she said, a front to launder funds for D.R.U.G.S which she mouthed silently to us. Standing within earshot of the owner now helpfully printing out our tickets, somehow it really wasn’t the conversation we wanted to be having.

We wished her well with her mother, made our excuses and left, slightly rattled but half wondering if maybe we were just two idiots abroad who’d wandered into a crime den to ask some international drug lords for 2 euro worth of printing.

Steve McCurry Icons exhibition:

The rest of our afternoon in Palermo was spent at the Galleria D’Arte Moderna enjoying the truly wonderful Steve McCurry Icons photographic exhibition.

This is the Afghan Girl photo which the photographer for Time, Life, National Geographic is most famous for…..

 

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In the interview with him on the exhibition audio guide, he says this one of a group of women huddling for shelter against a pre-monsoon  dust storm was possibly his own favourite…

 

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This one is pretty special too…

 

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And in the permanent exhibition, here’s a painting of Italy’s favourite son Garibaldi though we weren’t sure if it was artfully arranged or about to be carted off somewhere.

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And finally – not a day too soon sez Stuart – we were working our way through Palermo’s morning rush hour….

 

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…and queuing up to board the Grimaldi Lines ferry to the mainland Italy port of Salerno. The ship had come from Tunisia and timing of departure was a bit fluid thanks to the intensive searching of practically every car by the Italian Guardia di Finanza. That’s the arm of the Italian police charged with tackling the drugs trade, financial crime and smuggling.

The crossing took 10 hours and we arrived at around 9 pm and were relying on the apps Park4Night and Campercontact to find us somewhere near the port to park overnight. For the first time on this trip, they let us down.

We managed to find one place which matched the GPS co-ordinates given but it was for a big empty wasteland. There were no other motorhomes to give reassurance that it was safe to park up overnight but more alarming than that, in the far corner, mostly hidden by the shadows, a group of men wearing the same style jackets were huddled together. A gang or maybe police officers having a last-minute reconnoitre before a raid?

Either way, we didn’t feel safe so opted instead to park up for the night in a very public spot in a very public car park. Putting the night blinds on and settling down to sleep unsure if you will get a midnight knock on the door and a barked order from the carabinieri to move on, so how did we sleep? Quite well considering.  We’ve come a long way since that first nervous night time ‘wild camping’  in Extremadura.

Up Pompeii:

While Stuart was alone in Catania, he’d befriended a fellow camper from Austria. He recommended a campsite just outside Naples.

It was a top tip. Camping Zeus is located right beside the gates of Pompeii ruins and also beside a metro stop which was just a 30 minute train journey into the centre of Naples.

We asked at the ticket office how long we should give to our visit to Pompeii. Three hours would be good, he suggested. In fact, we probably could have spent a lot longer as the site of the city destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted on 24 August day in 79 A.D is massive – covering over 150 acres.

 

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The excavations which started in the mid 1700’s are still ongoing. The first place we visited on entering the main gate was the Suburban Thermal baths where excavations began in 1960 but it was only in the 1990’s that a series of astonishingly explicit erotic frescoes were uncovered from the layers of ash.  The audioguide coyly described them as showing amorous poses – including the only known Sapphic one in Roman art apparently. I’m not sure ‘amour’ had much to do with what was being depicted. No photos I’m afraid – this is a family blog!

There is debate still among archaeologists on whether the vividly coloured and numbered frescoes were a menu of services for an onsite brothel or – a popular theory – that, in the absence of lockers, the images were there to remind the bathers where they’d left their clothes.

The rest of our three hours there was spent wandering through the streets, peering into the houses, visiting this amphitheatre…

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…where in 1972 Pink Floyd staged an anti-Woodstock concert (i.e. no audience) …

 

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Finally we set off to try to find the Garden of the Fugitives where, behind glass, the casts of some of the victims, killed by asphyxiation and the high temperatures of lava flow, are laid out in the positions they fell that day.

It seemed everyone we met there that day was keen to find this area . ‘My friend, where are the Mummies?’ one tourist asked us because they saw we had a map.

Finally arriving there after a few wrong turns, our feeling that there was something ghoulish about our interest in seeing the casts increased when we saw one tourist point her camera at her teenage daughter, posed in front of the glass so the casts were neatly in the background and said: “Smile”.

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The casts were made by the excavators of Pompeii by pouring plaster of paris into the void between the skeleton and the compacted ash. Apparently it’s a technique which is no longer being used as it damages the skeletons.

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Exploring Naples

Naples wasn’t at all what we expected.

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We’d heard about overflowing rubbish bins and pickpockets but we didn’t know about the Art Stations of the Naples metro like glittering Garibaldi…

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….or Toledo with its mosaics on the theme of water and light.

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True, the line coming in from Pompeii with graffiti-covered stations, grubby carriages and even at 8 pm on our way back a slight edge to the atmosphere, but in the city centre, these refurbished stations were pretty magnificent.

The first thing we did when arriving into the city was get a taxi and head the few kilometres to the Capodimonte museum and art gallery which is set in acres of parkland.

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The taxi ride was an event in itself….watching our cabbie’s theatrical gestures at the antics of fellow drivers all trying to crowd onto the roundabout at the same time.

At the gallery, the permanent star attraction is Carravagio’s The Flagellation of Christ which was special to see. But on the day we visited, this was what the crowds were all here for…

…this is the Sea at Scheveningen

 

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… and this is Congregation leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen. These are the two paintings by Van Gogh which were stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2002. Though the thieves were caught quite quickly, they never revealed what happened to the paintings. And so they had disappeared without a trace until last September when – in a totally unconnected investigation – the Italian Guardia di Finanza raided a Camorra-owned apartment in a town near Naples as part of an operation against international drug traffickers. There were the two paintings, taken out of their frames but unharmed. It is still not clear how they ended up in the hands of the Italian crime syndicate but the find is nevertheless being hailed as a great victory for the Italian force and the jubilant exhibition before the paintings are returned to Amsterdam.

 

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In the contemporary art section of the gallery, this entire wall of black, with curved cracks, looked familiar. It’s called the Great Cretto by Burri- the same artist who created the landscape artwork we saw covering the earthquake village of Gibellina in Sicily.

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And finally, here’s another famous work at the Gallery. Andy Warhol’s Vesuvius….

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Here’s the real thing out the gallery window…

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I was trying to see if I could see Stuart. He’d stayed outside to do a bit of plane spotting….

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Heading back to the city, we went to look for a bus and encountered something else we hadn’t quite expected from the third biggest city in Italy – the fantastic friendliness of the locals. We met a couple of teenagers at the bus stop. They’d just been to the Gallery on a visit to catch the Van Goghs before they are returned to Amsterdam. We asked how to get to the centre and whether we could pay cash on the bus. Not only did they talk the bus driver into allowing us on without the tickets we should have bought in advance, the young girl gave me her leftover metro tickets she said she wouldn’t be using later.

Later that evening back in the centre of Naples, we were staring at a city map on a signboard trying to work out where we were. ‘Can I help you?’ asked a teenage boy. I confess we both initially greeted this with a hesitant – ‘what’s his angle’ response. There was no angle. He just wanted to help out two strangers in the town. You really get the impression these young people are proud of their beautiful city and want to show it off. They are doing a great job.

We spent a couple of evenings wandering through Naples’s historical centre …

 

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There’s Via San Gregorio Armeno which is lined with shops selling ‘presepes’ or nativity scenes though some of the craftsmen have turned their skills to turning out figures who definitely didn’t follow the star.

 

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We wandered down Via Tribunali for pizza and people watching.

 

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Cigarette break on Via Tribunali

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The pizzas were delicious, really creamy mozzarella and the right amount of chewiness in the dough.

And to drink, I’ll have what they are having…..here’s what all the locals were drinking for their pre-prandial tipple. A ‘spritz’ of prosecco and the Italian aperitif Aperol.

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And we indulged in rum baba cakes and flaky sfogliatelle pastries.

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With a mouthful of creamy flaky sfogliatelle, it’s hard to smile.

 

Somehow the tripe on display here, looking more like a lab experiment than a delicatessen, was not too appetising.

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So after a very enjoyable few days in Naples, a city we would definitely return to, it was goodbye to Vesuvius….

 

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Vesuvius in the distance as we set off for Bari

…as we drove across the boot for the port of Bari to catch the ferry to Albania.

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And a very slick ferry it was too. Here’s Stuart heading through the corridor of the GMV Line’s Rhapsody as his name was called out over the PA system. The only upside of having to wait three hours to board to be the last vehicle on was that we were the first off.

Then it was ‘Welcome to Albania’.

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After Morocco, we reckon that could be our most challenging destination but let’s see.

PS. Here’s more of the wonderful Steve McCurry photos…what a treat that was.

 

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Week 20- Sicily (Week 2)

 

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The plume of steam rising from Mount Etna

Posted by Stuart 

With Helen away for the week, busy visiting The Mammy in Ireland and her children in England, the heavy responsibility of writing the blog falls to me. Apologies in advance.

This week my son Callum and I enjoyed Sicilian baroque, a vertigo inducing hill-top town, some Greek and Roman theatres, a couple of fish markets, a volcano or two and… some skiing.

So, just a quiet week then.

We kicked off with a few choice bottles in a craft beer place followed by excellent food in The Red House- a shack on the dockside in Siracusa. This was pasta with sea urchins…

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We mooched around Ortygia  and then visited the impressive if shabby and half closed archaeological park in Siracusa.

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DSC_5149This is The Ear of Dionysius, named after the tyrant Dionysius 1 of Siracusa- probably a natural feature but one that was apparently used for holding and possibly torturing prisoners.

We then ventured along the coast to Augusta expecting to visit a small, quaint seaside town for lunch. Founded 27 centuries ago and with the old town on an island created in the 16th century, we had high hopes. A bit of a surprise then as it seems that most of the 35,000 (!) inhabitants work in the oil refining business and so hopes of the picturesque quickly faded. But we found a side street with a great restaurant and opposite it a bakery whose biscotti made the detour very worthwhile.

Scorpion fish and pasta (this is Callum looking impressed).

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DSC_5158Biscotti from the bakery over the road-mmmm.

Callum agreed that skiing on Mount Etna could be a cool thing to do so off we headed. The ensuing hairy drive from sea level to 5500 feet up the north side of Mount Etna had the van overheating big time and we stopped frequently, trying to cool things down. Deep snowdrifts narrowed the road as we climbed and climbed.

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Eventually we emerged into sunshine at Piano Palazzo, parked up, breathed a major sigh of relief and after a few minutes spent hiring skis and getting lift passes, off we went up the sole chairlift and then the button lift.

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Four pistes, plenty of snow and great skiing in the sunshine for an hour until the cloud came down.

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Another hour of skiing eventually  purely by touch and feel and it was time to stop.

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Still, with the sun, the  skiing and the steam rising from the top of the mountain at 11,000 feet it was a unique experience. Satisfied that it had indeed been “cool”, we headed off down the mountain and sat in the van for coffee and a late lunch while the rain bounced off the roof.

And so, the madness that is Taormina..

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As we headed to our destination for the night we saw a hill-top town in the distance perched on and around a very high cliff and it slowly dawned on us that this was where we were headed. Round and round and up and up we went – we even conquered a 13% gradient section – the same as the one that had defeated us in northern Spain.

At one stage we had Serena Satnav and two mobile phones, with Google maps, all showing  different squiggling routes to the top. But it was no use- we were lost and going around the mountain in circles.

We finally found somewhere to park but not before we were stopped by a very helpful lady in a fur coat whilst trying to drive our classic VW(i.e. tatty van) down the very swanky pedestrianised main street.

After the shabbiness of Siracusa, Taormina seemed to meet Callum’s expectation of Sicily –classy, elegant and expensive. Made popular by Europe’s rich and artistic in the late 19th century and now full of top class hotels and chic shops, it also had an English public park complete with follies created in the late 1800’s by blow-in Lady Florence Trevelyan.

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So, why build a town in such a crazy location?

DSC_5183The views are truly fabulous, the Greek/Roman theatre is hugely impressive and the vertigo inducing drops at every turn add to the drama.

 

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Volcanoes seem to be a bit of a thing in Sicily. Indeed, there is a volcano called Vulcano- one of the Aeolian Islands off the north east tip of Sicily. DSC_5191This isn’t Vulcano – it’s Stomboli from afar.

DSC_5210After an afternoon paddling in the sea, and as we couldn’t make it all the way to Stromboli in the time we had, we headed off from Milazzo on the hydrofoil for the 45 minute trip to Vulcano.

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A pleasant stroll through Vulcano Porto in the sunshine and then off up to the Gran Cratere and the 1600 foot high summit.

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We had seen see the steam escaping around the volcano rim from the harbour and the smell of sulphur became stronger as we got closer to the top.

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DSC_5229Heading along the edge of the volcano, holding our breath and walking through the clouds of sulphurous steam and then further up to the main summit was quite an experience.

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However, the best part was drinking the beer we had carried with us- the finest in Sicily as it happened.

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Before Callum returned to England, we had some time in Catania.

Sicily’s second city had been flattened by erupting Mount Etna and then by an earthquake within the space of a few years in the 17th Century but what was subsequently re-built puts most modern town planners to shame.

And so we had a good hoof around the elegant squares and streets for a bit more baroque but the highlight was the fish market.

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DSC_5285A great way to while away the morning but not many laughs…although this chap was having a blast…

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Very big knives for very big tuna…

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These chaps were clearly looking forward to a big fish dinner….all in a light hearted mood, clearly.

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And that was about it for the week. No bird of the week this week  (sorry but haven’t seen many)  but plenty of these critters enjoying the sun.

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Oh, and just to be very clear- the roads in Sicily are truly shocking. All roads, including the toll roads, are falling to bits. Here’s a typical example….

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Whilst we have managed to avoid the kamikaze Panda drivers and random abandoned (er..parked) vehicles it has been impossible to avoid the potholes.  Each time we hit one, I wince as the van takes a major hit. Oh, for the roads of Morocco- I felt safe there!

(N.B. Normal editorial service will be resumed next week)