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In our first episode in Albania we spend 3 days off the bike exploring Sarande and Ksamil. This region of Albania is absolutely stunning. The turquoise waters, the friendly people and relatively cheap eats/drinks made this an unforgettable stop.
We visited on 9th of April 2024 which is before their tourist season ramps up, so it was very quiet and not everything was open, but we thoroughly enjoyed our time nevertheless.
Stay tuned for our upcoming episodes as we make our way towards the west coast of Ireland.
Total distance cycled so far: 669km
Countries visited: 2
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we’re Lauren and Scott and we are cycling 10,000 km across Europe starting in Greece the plan is to cycle to the West Coast of Ireland passing through 15 countries we cycle through some of the most magical Landscapes Europe has to offer so join us on our first ever Bike Tour as we learn to navigate the European cycling networks encounter all weather conditions and overindulge in our favorite baked goods mine’s so crunchy in this episode we have some time off the bikes we visit the Albanian Riviera town of Z we go on an unexpected hike to a medieval wi bar with magnificent views of Oldtown just can’t get over how good this view is and generally just enjoy our time in Sande good morning we’ve just arrived into Albania it’s 10 7 had to go back an hour border crossing was super easy there was no one in line it took about 5 minutes and then we just had our descent and now we’re on our way to Sur about 20 km away we got a nice beautiful view of this uh m in this town just about to head into S 4 km ago hopefully all downhill so far our B has been very pretty very quiet let’s rubbish some greas so far less dogs so far and more open Greenland more possibly with wild gam by the looks at it hav been in here like an hour but overall I’m impressed so far the roads doing pretty good actually little bit bunky here and there but uh pretty smooth let [Applause] ni beautiful Rolling Hills and big mountains that’s to quite a few of those I think very pretty little bit of an ink on Hill here 9.7 according to me quick 6ks was that 6ks oh make up a lot of time on those down Hills although you lose them up the hill oh looks like we have another one check yourselves in folks to S but only 4 km away now what a lovely ride that was oh L’s kep Corners we in [Music] Albania just up here somewhere under the r there’s the market I think we’re on the right hand side of that here we are now got L here oh she’s step all right we’ve arriv but got to figure out how to get in now so we do that and get back there just out our staircase to the apartment Line’s gone up to let us in get the key code and uh sort things out then we’ll take the panes in and we’re going to give the bikes a bit of a wash down here with some detergent get the chains a bit more sparkly clean so we can uh let it sit for a few days I’ll give you a tour When we arrive when I’ll go up there with the camera hopefully it’s all right I only had one review on Airbnb so who knows what it’s going to be like but looks good from the photos here is the view from our apartment overlooking the old town we have planned a three night stay here in Sande as it is our first time in this area of Albania we’re very excited to get out and do some [Music] exploring welcome to Albania everybody I feel like when we arrived on our bikes that was actually 2 days ago and we’ve just been recuperating yesterday was a bit rainy and Sur so we did all the fun things like bike maintenance and washing and cooked a meal went after some cocktails delicious anyway so today’s our big day um down here in Sur area so we caught the local bus just now um down to kmill km K Island I think which is is like a group of islands with beautiful water First Impressions we only arrived about 5 minutes ago odd place because it’s very closed Sande even though it’s low low season has like pretty much a lot open I’d say maybe like 60% open here it seems like maybe 1 or 2% from this small that we’ve seen but this we’re just like there’s like beaches and beaches and their all their umbrellas are stacked up and there’s no one on them and I can just imine in the summertime this would just be full of sun beds that you have to pay many EUR to you had to pay €25 I think for a suned maybe on these beaches here €25 for a sunbe suned seems pretty extreme and at the moment they’re not even out and it’s actually pretty cold that’s the reason we wearing it is pretty cool though there must be about 15 people here on the whole Beach yeah it is pretty cool this is a very nice place don’t get me wrong but I see why people come here in the on season and not too far in the offseason because it’s pretty much dead and the water’s too cold to swim in but it is absolutely perfect to look at and the water is exceptionally clean and blue clear but the vibe is just flat and dead which one would you rather packed and busy crowded but a bit of a Vibe or a bit flat dead and the bit Jo to yourself hi run so to get here we caught a local bus from and just outside of our accommodation in Sande yeah and we were a little bit late so we’re happy that the bus is a little bit late I a couple minutes so wasn’t it yes we jumped on the bus and kind of sat down and I W to said anything but then this really friendly man came up to us and he was the guy who goes around and asks for the money and we told him where we were going and he just seemed to be like running the whole bus he was like yeah this is your stop like you get jump off and then he like told us when it was our turn to off we tried to get off early and he was like no no no we’re not there yet 300 Albanian Le which is $4 for both of us to get here yeah it was a really busy um bus with locals but we had a seat front seat was it like 10 minutes 15 minutes in the bus [Music] yeah so we just walked along the beaches all the way to a little corner of some sort and very beautiful we found where everybody is actually at the beach like swimming really there’s only one person in swimming though the breeze is a bit chilly um water so blue but I feel like what makes it is we’re looking at like snowcapped mountains blue beautiful sandy beaches to snow cat Ms what more could you want oh there fishies in the water too it looks very deep this would be a good spot to do a little jump off would I swim to the other side looks very deep but I think I would we walked all the way around the beaches hopping from like peer to peer beautiful not very busy it’s hot in town but it’s like cold on the beach with the wind so we didn’t go swimming but now we’re kind of hot either way back to S now for some uh what we going to get for lunch Yos Yos back onto the local bus we go so we just got back from Kill we actually ended up waiting 50 minutes for the bus because we think we just missed one that’s going heading back to S it’s good bus trip back that we grabbed a chicken yos for lunch and it’s starting to blow a gale outside like the Yus Place had like this beautiful view of the water and it was just kind of like being we kind of like being smashed by wind but that’s not stopping us from hiking up a mountain to a old fortress that is now a wine bar no The Fortress is on the other side and the wine bar is on the other side right something like this we’re going to the wine bar here’s the big question are you going to go the elevator no going to go down the stairs safer Al seems a bit dodgy it’s going to break anytime I’ll just stop working goes for a while doesn’t it it’s like the never ending staircas here is hello again hello again good how are you yes very windy though but out our fellow Italian Albanian friend that is helping his mate do some construction inside the building that we’re staying in yeah he’s the only person there that we’ve seen he’s a cool dude look at these Elite views over s not sure the GoPro is going to do anything good for it but there’s kfu there’s Sur and this is like where all the uh all the abandoned buildings and stuff are and the rubbish by looks a it haven’t come across much of it here but take a few steps outside the uh main Center and you’ll come across it we found a little shortcut towards the wine bar so it won’t take us an hour to walk there maybe it only take us 40 minutes although says shortcut he’s taking us down like six of wrong roads so I don’t know if that is counted in making a time will to I suppose views from when you’re just walking around the streets mountains with snow on top with lots of greenery beautiful think we’re only about 12 to 15 minutes away now shortcut really helped us we’re very close now probably 5 to 10 minutes away the views have gotten better every second the higher we’ve got look at this behind me absolutely breathtaking here’s the walk up to where the wine bar is we’re just about to walk into the wine bar now we took a little Wrong Turn before and cuz Len was angry she was not happy at me says it’s right there on the next to this wall um yes I think this is it wow look it’s aune oh and I feel like we’re on the right way now but yeah feel we could have taken it a quicker way just can’t get over how good this view is all right one of the gates was closed so obviously wasn’t that entrance so we found this little dirt road on the side and that’s leading up to what it looks like another entrance and there looks to be people at the front let’s give this a crack doesn’t look right now I’m looking at these people it should be out there I don’t know we’ll find out we’ll find out back to our original option of the step driveway with the gate it’s just open because someone walked in the front of us we just two on time for the albanians I think ‘s at 4: got here at 4: it’s 5 4 now so and we [Music] go I don’t think the albanians come alive till like after 9:00 and we’re at our Peak at about 3: 400 p.m. it’s good we get these places to ourselves but usually there’s no one [Music] around not bad this how nice would be these pretty little lights on you going to go in let’s go to take a seat I must admit I’m still not that used to European Hospitality what are you thinking bab what we got these ones are red these are 17,000 wow 36,000 not even for a leader Chronicles of making it to the one bar we’ve managed to get a glass of bread cuz with that look at the look at the bushes behind us absolutely banging around it think it’s time to move inside we got two glasses of red and they came out as two glasses of red we also like a little meat poter so a meat butter an anti pasta antipasta poter same thing isn’t it all anyway we’re going to move inside now because she’s too blowy out here yeah beautiful view beautiful view we’ll enjoy that on the walk down yeah but for now inside inside we go interesting looking ANL though I’d say got some yummy cheese that is ate a piece and it was really yummy a few olives some Pudo um what looks to be madella which is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen on an don’t know what the white one is then it looks like it’s stz what’s over there or some blue cheese um no crackers at all H and maybe Rish in a pot um it’s a little bread stick of some sort and I’m hungry let’s dig in all right we’ve just left our little wine bar Cristiano on top of uh the hill overlooking s we were the only people in there for the whole 1 hours there’s a car coming up right now they’re 100% Going to the Wi bar ah we’ve missed out on a friend anyway we had to have a tea now hold on I have something to say all right I am ing us back into Sande so we’ll probably be in Sande in the next 6 to 8 minutes we definitely took the wrong way we took a 45 minute walk instead of a 23 possibly it’s only 2K away to and took us like a 4 and a half walk through the hood apparently too yes we made it down the mountain in record time thanks to Lauren’s expert navigational skills we decided to go to a highly recommended seafood restaurant called hxi it had a beautiful view of the sun setting over the glistening water a wonderful end to a lovely day in Sur Kile look really good and that’s pretty much a wrap for our day here in s we have just gotten home from our feed at haki we had obviously what you saw was the grilled Dorado and the seafood pasta they also gave us a two free shots of raka and some fruits for free at the end for dessert which is very tasty so I do highly recommend that place it was better than I thought it was going to be it’s got a 4.8 on Google so it did live up to his expectations uh we spent about $45 not too bad but uh yeah home now back on the road tomorrow on the bike we’ll see you then