Journal / Balkans / 2014-05-09

Boat and Tirana

I would say most of the people on the trip are borderline addicted to their phone — myself excluded. But it is what it is; that’s just our culture nowadays. Still, I think there’s a bit of a problem when the first thing someone does when they get to a hotel is search for WiFi. I had this conversation with some people a few days ago, and we agreed to not use our phones for a day. Anyways, I bring all this up because I didn’t blog yesterday, so I’m behind by like a day or so. Bear with me as I bring you up to date.

Wednesday morning we packed our bags at the hotel in Ohrid, had some breakfast at the hotel and bussed down to the water for a boat excursion. The weather has been incredible the past couple of days, and I’m so glad that it was raining the first half of the trip versus the other way around.

Rowing the other day was cool, but there was obviously a different dynamic on the bigger motor boat, and we certainly were able to get further out on the lake. There were some stunning sights.

After the boat tour, we spent most of the afternoon on a bus in route to Tirana, Albania. Thus was more or less a halfway point to Montenegro, so we were only going to be here for a night or so. We were drilled with the stereotype to use extra caution when walking in Albania. But it was probably for the better — best to be safe than sorry.

For dinner, we all stuck together and walked over to the Sky Club restaurant at the top of a 15 or 16 story building about twenty minutes from the hotel. The food was pretty good, and the view was incredible.