Ashley Gets Lost

After Saturday’s harrowing vehicular escape from Tiranë proper, your girls were hungry. There are no American fast food restaurants on Crete except for one lonely McDonald’s in Heraklion, so I was pretty excited about the prospect of a Burger King with a drive through by a gas station along the highway. Of course I needed some nugs, and they have these really good little fried pockets of nacho cheese with jalapenos in them. Olya got a whopper meal, and I also got a red bull because that apartment did not come with the gift of coffee. That feast set us back around 10 bucks. I don’t think you can even get a whopper meal for $10 in America these days!

The chicken nuggets were more like McDonald’s nuggets than BK, and the fries followed suit. But it was still fun and tided us over until later. After an hour and a half or so of driving, we made it to Shkodër, where Olya has been living for a bit now.

It’s a very cute old town, and I especially loved that there were little book shop kiosks around. What if you need an emergency book stat?! They got you covered!

While I did see some cats, there are way more street dogs than street cats there! I got used to all the small/medium dogs that are on Crete, so I was excited to see big boys and girls just chilling around. They are apparently well taken care of. They are chipped, vaccinated, and fed. Here’s Olya giving out treats!

Olya introduced me to her new friend Maria, who is also from America. Maria has lived in Albania for several years now and knows some of its secrets. She offered to be our tour guide into some local nature on Sunday, and we enthusiastically accepted her offer!

We first had to fill up on chicken and pizza. I couldn’t decide which I wanted, so I went with a chicken pizza. It was delicious!

Our first stop was the Mesi bridge, seen at the top of the post. This is what it looks like when you walk over it. It is one of the longest Ottoman bridges in the area, and it is gorgeous. As is the river it crosses! We then headed up into the mountains through a canyon following the same river.

We made several stops along the river, and the water and rock formations were stunning. I definitely had to suck it up and be brave several times wandering around, and I’m so glad I did!

We went to commune with these goats, and there was an old shepherdess up on the road yelling (not meanly) at us in Albanian. We ended up scurrying up the side of the hill instead of taking the long way, and she was laughing so hard. I imagine we provided some quality entertainment for her.

Our next stop was this cave, the scale of which does not come through in this photo. It was really cool inside!

After the cave we went across the street where there was another river access point. Maria informed us that she was wearing her swim suit and was about to take a cold dip. I said I’d join her if nobody minded that I was in my granny panties.

Olya opted not to join us. Hahaha!

I really can’t blame her. It was absolutely frigid! I got as deep as my belly button and escaped when my feet started burning. Maria is a bad ass who LAID DOWN IN THE WATER.

Thus endeth the nature activities. I’ll be back with one more Albania installment, which is mostly just fun stuff around town.

Special thanks to Olya and Maria for sharing their photos with me as well. Several of these were swiped from them!