Albania

[ClaudiaF]

having never been there can anyone make some suggestions on what to see and drivers perhaps?

thanx.

[lord of the seas]

I would not let an Albanian drive me for anything.

[Penzance]

ClaudiaF: My suggestion - stay on the ship when in Sarande Port. My husband and I did venture off the ship, walked along some trash riddled streets and tons of half-built apartment blocks and got back on the ship again. Some folks did go on an Oceania tour and said it was pleasent once you were in the countryside.

[lilybug]

Wow, doesn't sound like the description I read in a travel guide. Anyone else have recent experience here?

[ClaudiaF]

geez..Lilybug.. I agree...what kind of exotic :eek: port is this?:confused:

[gnu2cruisin']

Just returned from the Istanbul-Athens cruise. It was absolutely fabulous--except for the Albania port. I agree with Penzance. Stay on the boat. Not only is there nothing to see in the town, they are SO not ready for tourists. We arrived and the few shops closed. I'm told some people took a drive away from the port and saw a pretty view, but in my opinion, Oceania should remove this port from their itinerary.

[scdreamer]

We were on Insignia last October, and one of the ports on our cruise was Sarande. The city itself appeared to be pretty devastated ... amazing mounds of of trash everywhere and concrete apartment buildings that can only be described as "gulag-style." Lots of apparently unemployed men hanging out on the streets. The streets were rubble-filled and everything looked dirty and broken. I was amazed at the huge mountains of discarded plastic water bottles ... made my own efforts at recycling at home seem to be a ridiculous effort in the face of all the plastic I saw everywhere.

 

We always make our own arrangements for tours, but in Albania we took Oceania's tour to Gjirokastra, since there did not appear to be any reliable way to make our own plans.

 

Gjirokastra is a medieval village in the mountains. There is an old castle there, and the old village is a UNESCO heritage site.

 

The bus ride to Gjirokastra took a couple hours - once we were out of the city limits, the countryside was lovely. The village itself was charming ... red roofed houses on hillsides, and winding cobblestone streets.

 

What we really hated about the tour was that the guide, a retired college professor I believe, was quite a martinet. He had us all pile into an awful tourist-y 1960s-style coffee shop as soon as we arrived at the village, and then marched us up to the castle, refusing to allow us to have any interaction or time in the village. The castle was rather boring - it is apparently used now as a recepticle for old discarded Soviet statues, weapons, and other articles of propaganda.

 

The villagers kind of watched us as we marched lock-step through the narrow cobblestone streets and up a hill to the castle, where we were instructed to stay with our guide. On the way back through the village to the bus, a few of us strayed off into a little craft/gift shop, where we furtively made a few purchases, before the guide came and hustled us back to the bus. It was obvious that the shopkeepers in the village could have used an infusion of tourist dollars, but we were not allowed to do any shopping or exploring. I actually sneaked off into a little grocery to see if I could find a piece of fruit or other snack to buy, and the guide followed me and insisted I had to hurry or the bus would be leaving without me.

 

I would love to return to Gjirokastra on my own someday. I think Albania obviously has a lot of problems - if you know the history of isolation and repression under the form of communism in effect there for so many generations, it is no wonder - but the people seemed friendly enough, at least outside Sarande.

 

It was definitely the oddest choice for a cruise port I have ever encountered ...

[Wendy The Wanderer]

That guide sounds a little like a couple of guides we had in post-Soviet Ukraine in 2004. I just kept wishing I could tell them to lighten up a bit! They were like prison guards.