Awesome Albania

We arrived at Saranda, Albania harbour mid afternoon on Sat. 30th having left Othonoi, our lovely Greek refuge between Italy and Albania.
Saranda has been a delightful surprise. We knew very little about Albania except that it's non-EU and therefore a stopping point for boats that need to get out of the EU after 18 months, like us. It is mountainous with scrubby, rocky tops. We anchored in the harbour along with Brazilian, Australian, British, South African, and French sailboats and rowed ashore to meet the agent helping us with customs. The harbourfront is beautiful with a lovely promenade, beaches, trees filled with birds chattering and chirping, restaurants and hotels, and clean! Not a speck of garbage anywhere (unlike Italy, dump your garbage anywhere, everywhere) and there are cleaners and sweepers regularly but obviously people respect their environment. We found the grocery stores, patisseries 🥐and a restaurant 😋🦑🫑🥒for dinner. The Australians popped by to say hello and we agreed to get together the next day. Music played from the pirate tour boats as people partied aboard and we went to sleep!
Sunday felt like a holiday because we didn't have to go anywhere or rush to get somewhere - we had arrived! We swam and read and watched the beach goers and promenade walkers, heard the Muslim calls to prayer and the Catholic church bells. Capt. Bob had the audacity at one point to suggest we go for a sail around the bay 🤯🤪 - NO! We ended the lovely day on the Australian's catamaran for drinks and supper.Les mer