A fish out of water

 Just as an interest, the books recommended in the reading list... To kill a mockingbird  Rebbeca  The kite runner Life of Pi Pride and prejudice  Little women Beloved  A suitable boy 

 Didn't sleep great but did have the best views from my bed.  Up early and out to go and enjoy my last swim.  As I was changing there was a group of women also changing.  It's the same group I have seen all week . I heard one say 'where you from?' and then quickly followed by a morning from another 😄 we had a broken English conversation, the three of them swim every day at 6am even in the winter... They told me I was a very good swimmer 😁.  With my pride in check off I went, avoiding buoys, people and sunken pirates.  It was a beautiful swim 🥰 Kerry came down and we enjoy the last hour of sun , before going back to the hostel, showering, breakfasting packing the last bits before heading to the ferry.  Luckily the ferry port was very close !  We managed to get on an early ferry and off we went in the direction of Corfu.  We didn't manage a boat trip in the week so this was the next best thing.  Lovely views of the coastline of Corfu an...

 After a great night's sleep definitely needed to catch up we decided to go to ksmail, Albania's french riviera! Firstly we had to have our lovely apartment and swap it for the last night to a dorm room.  We could check in early.  Left our stuff and headed for the bus.  Literally within two mins there was a bus but also lots of people.  It's a very popular day trip.  If you look at pictures it looks amazing, white sands, turquoise waters.. paradise!    The bus made another stop and more people crammed themselves on.  We were lucky and managed to get a seat.  Halfway through the journey you could hear some excitement, it was the ticket man, basically pushing his way through the but demanding people's money.  You definitely have to be a certain character to do that job.   We didn't really know where to get off so we generally followed the people.  We knew that the concept of Ksmail is beach clubs but we were under the i...

 So the man from the hostel who said he would send my purse tomorrow, kept saying he would send my purse tomorrow until it finally got to Monday and he says he can't send it ...%®'™¥¢€!!! What to do ?? I went and spoke to the family, who were very helpful, trying to organise a guy they knew who goes to the city to contact a guy he knew who collect the purse from shkoder all without me actually having to do anything.. brilliant..no failed the man they knew wasn't going ..ah booo  So the decision was made to take the night bus from Sarande to Tirana wait in the 'bus station' until the first bus to shkoder.  I checked all times I would arrive at 0230 and there was a bus at 5 ..not too bad considering the bus station doesn't really exist , it's a car park with a bench or 2. Ticket bought,  message sent to make sure I could actually access my purse and retrieve it and could this be confirmed before 21.30 as I wouldn't have WiFi.  Caught the bus at 22h luckily...

 I'm a bit behind, the joys of relaxing!! After another day in the beach we thought it would be a good idea to do an excursion a) to get out of the sun and b) to stop being so lazy.  So Gjirokastër was on the cards.   Gjirokastër is known as the stone city, and from the pics it looks lovely.  Originally we were going to stay there for two nights before we decided to make sarandë our base.  So we researched the bus times, got ourselves ready and headed for the bus.  We asked around, it's very difficult to understand transport here because there are public buses and there are public buses run by agencies.  So my information told me we could catch a public bus.   But of course this information was wrong, it was a public bus run by an agency and wasn't for another hour.  But I didn't believe the agency guy I just thought he wanted our money, so we waited and waited for a bus that never came and then were worried that we wouldn't then ge...

As I was swimming this morning I do believe I needed to expand on the buoy incident!! The buoys here aren't like our big yellow minions we have at home they are alot smaller and alot harder.  I guess they are a bit bigger than a small coke bottle.  Also when I happen to come into contact with said buoy I was swimming into the sun and couldn't see Jack shit!  This morning's swim was different, there were clouds, a lot of grass and also a cruise ship but still got in the hour,!☺️