Marvellous Morocco, and so much more….

One thing I didn’t mention in my last report was that, as we were going to be leaving the boat in Morocco and flying to the UK, we had to get additional paperwork to allow us to leave and re-enter the country without a return ticket.  That was all set in motion, so we set about exploring Tangier.  It is an interesting city, a mix of North African, French and Spanish.  The King of Morocco is an avid sailor and the marina is his showcase.  The whole area around the marina is clean and very well-kept, with nice wide streets and a lovely beach.

We walked along the front, then turned off towards the Medina, where we had a great time wandering the maze of narrow streets, lined with stores selling all manner of goods – beautiful carved leather, intricate metalwork, jewellery and of course, spices, fruits and cheeses.  As we were trying hard to empty the fridge before our long trip to the UK we didn’t buy anything but made notes for our return!  We understand that, with the King’s attempts to make the city more cosmopolitan, things are changing here in the Medina and Kasbah.  In the past, tourists were not welcomed, but now it is a pleasure to walk around the Kasbah.  The vendors try to pull you in to buy, but they are not too pushy and we never felt uncomfortable.

We walked up to the Café Hafa, which has the most amazing views over the Strait of Gibraltar.  This café has been open since 1921 and has quite a bohemian history, with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote among its visitors.

Near the café are the Phoenician tombs, a necropolis dating back to the year 1400.  Moray enjoyed the view!

Having done a great job of emptying the fridge, we needed to eat out, so we headed to a restaurant we had been told about.  It is called the Saveur de Poisson, and is on a little backstreet in the Medina.  We were told to get there by 6:45pm, 15 minutes before it opens, if we wanted to get a seat straightaway.  So, intrigued, we set off.  We were far too early so first we went to the Grand Café de Paris for a glass of fresh orange juice.  We sat outside and people watched, just as if we were in the Bourne Ultimatum!!

When it was time, we headed to the restaurant, where we joined the queue.  There were three groups ahead of us, but the queue grew very quickly.  When the restaurant opened, we filed in and found tables.  There were only 8, so it filled up pretty quickly, but the staff were amazing – they knew the order we had queued in, and that was the order we were served in.  No orders are placed as it is a fixed menu according to the fish they have that day.  We had a fish soup, fish tagine, grilled fish skewers, whole grilled fish – are you spotting the theme here!  Everything was delicious and cost the grand total of 200 dirhams per person, which is about $18.

After a couple of days preparing the boat to be left for 6 weeks, we got up bright and early and walked to the Tangier train station, where we caught a train to Marrakech.  The first part of the journey was on a high speed train from Tangier to Casablanca.  It travelled at 313kph, and was an amazingly smooth ride.  Even more impressive was that it departed on time from each station, to the second!

In Casablanca, we changed trains and were now on the famed-in-song Marrakech Express.  This is a much slower train, but gives an opportunity to watch the landscape change from fairly rural to desert along the route. 

We arrived in Marrakech and took a taxi to our hotel – a little riad in the Medina.  Riad Jomana was a lovely little hostel.  We had a great room, with a private bathroom, and we were right in the heart of the medina. 

After relaxing for a while, we headed out to the medina, where we wandered the Kasbah and had a meal before heading back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep before starting the next part of our trek home.

Marrakesh Banksy!

Next morning, after a fabulous breakfast of fruit, pastries and omelette, we took a taxi to the airport and flew to Gatwick, arriving at around 10pm.  We headed out to the taxi rank, only to be told that there was a strike by the airport cabbies, but that if we could wait, they would find us one from the town to pick us up.  One arrived pretty quickly and took us to our hotel.  After our great experience in the riad, this hotel was a little underwhelming, but the night manager was kind enough to pour us a drink to take to our room with us.  The room was tiny but functional, so we watched a bit of TV, before settling in for the night.

The next morning, we got to the reception area to meet our ride to the airport for the next part of our journey.  When it hadn’t arrived at the expected time, we asked the day manager what was going on.  He made a call and then told us that the taxi wasn’t coming.  He handed us the card of a taxi company and said we should call one ourselves.  Given that the night before we had arranged a taxi with the night manager and paid for it, we didn’t really think this was acceptable!  After the exchange of a few words, the night manager was called and arrived shortly afterwards.  We felt a bit bad that he had been woken up after his shift, on his day off to drive us to the airport in his own vehicle, but we needed to get to there.

After a quick breakfast at the airport, Moray and I said our goodbyes.  I was travelling by bus to Bristol, while he was flying to Aberdeen. 

One of the hard things about this nomadic life is when things happen at home and you aren’t there to support your family.  In this instance a couple of matters made it important for me to be in Bristol with my family.  First of all, my Mum had just had surgery and needed help, which I had already planned to go home for.  But sadly, at the beginning of July, my sister had lost her husband in tragic circumstances, and I wanted to be there to support her and her four children, as well as attend the funeral.  I spent three weeks in Bristol before heading up to Glasgow on a National Express bus.

Moray had to go straight to Aberdeen as he had an important appointment he couldn’t miss.  He spent his time helping out with building projects for various family members.  His aunt and uncle kindly added him to their car insurance, so he drove over to Glasgow to meet me at the bus stop.  We spent a couple of nights in Glasgow, with a great day looking around the city, shopping and eating.  For my birthday, Moray booked us an Escape Room adventure.  When we arrived, I had a feeling of déjà vu – which turned out to be right when we discovered that this was an Escape Room we had done before.  It was all the funnier when I realised it was called “Amnesia”!!!!  Ah well, our memories were so bad we couldn’t remember the answers to the riddles so it was all good! 

We followed this up with a great Chinese meal before heading back to the hotel.  The next morning, we set off for the drive back to Turriff.  We are contemplating moving to Scotland when our full-time cruising days are done, so we wanted to look around some of the towns and villages we might like to live in.  We also stopped off at a birthday party, so that we could catch up with Ingrid, Paul and family, before heading back to Moray’s Mum’s house.

Over the next couple of weeks, there were more building projects for Moray, knitting projects for me and lots of jigsaw puzzles!  Here’s a time-lapse patio build. If only they were so quick in reality 🙂

We also had a great afternoon out in Aberdeen checking out the new wall art around the city and meeting up with a group of friends that Moray hasn’t seen for years, which was awesome!

All too soon, it was time to head back to Tangier, starting with a very early morning flight to Gatwick.  Before I go further, I need to say thank you to everyone who put us up, put up with us and generally entertained us.  But thank you especially to Ken and Lorraine, who not only put us up a couple of times, they got up really early to get us to the airport by 4:30am.  You are stars!

The Gatwick to Marrakech flight was uneventful and arrived right on time.  We immediately got a taxi to the train station, where we were to meet up with a representative of Marrakech Tickets.  We were hoping to take the overnight sleeper train to Tangier, but it is only possible to book seats online via the train company website.  To get a “Couchette”, you have to go through an agent who goes to the station to buy the tickets in person.  The couchettes are four to a room in the sleeper carriage, and there was an option to buy all four, so that we would have our own room.  Although they weren’t expensive, we decided to just take our chances.  I must admit, I was a little anxious sitting in the station, hoping I hadn’t been taken in and handed over money foolishly, but I needn’t have worried.  Just as arranged, Hassan showed up with our tickets.  He handed them over, wished us a pleasant trip and hurried off.  Pretty soon after that it was time to board the train.  As it happens, we were the only people who had booked couchettes, so not only did we have the room to ourselves, we had the whole carriage and the attention of the carriage guard.  After making sure we were comfortable, he left us alone until we arrived in Tangier, where he gave us back our stamped tickets so that we could get breakfast at the station.  All in all, it was a great experience and although we didn’t sleep like babies, we got enough sleep that we arrived refreshed at 6:30 in the morning. 

After a 30 minute walk back to the boat, we started planning our next few days.  First thing was for me to go to the grocery store to restock the boat and to do some cooking in preparation for some longer passages.  Moray had some boat tasks to complete, which all went fairly smoothly, leaving us with a couple of days to rent a car to see some more of Morocco.

We headed away from Tangier on wonderful new roads, so different from the ones we had experienced in Tunisia.  This was unfortunate, because the good roads lulled Moray into a false sense of security, rudely shattered when he was pulled over for speeding.  After a brief wait for the paperwork to be completed and 150 dirham ($15) later, we continued on our way, at a much more sedate pace.

Bah Humbug 😦

Our first stop was Chefchaouen, a beautiful little town, famous for its blue-washed buildings.  We enjoyed wandering through the narrow streets, although it was a lot more touristy than the medinas we had seen in Tangier and Marrakech. 

We took a walk up to the Spanish Mosque, where there were great views of the whole area, before heading back to our riad in the medina.

The restaurant that was recommended to us by the hotel manager was unfortunately closed, as it was a Monday, but we had a lovely meal at a nearby restaurant.  The soups and tajines were delicious, but especially so were the desserts.  My fruit salad was a sight to behold and I thought Moray was going to cry with happiness when he saw the crème caramel!

Next day we headed off to Akchour, in the Talassemtaine National Park.  We had read about the nice hike and the waterfalls, so we hoped there would be some nice views.  As it was still September, and there had been no rain, we didn’t think the falls would be that impressive, but we wanted to get to God’s Bridge, a naturally formed archway.  The hike was lovely, along good paths, with lots of little tea shops all along the river side – even in the middle of the river!  And when we got to the bridge we weren’t disappointed – it was stunning.

We continued our drive back with a quick stop in Tetouan, before heading back to Tangier.

There we visited Hercules Cave and the lighthouse at Cap Spartel, both well worth a visit.  Then a trip to the hypermarket to stock up on groceries ready for our departure from Tangier.

We had planned to leave Tangier and head to Rabat and then Agadir before leaving Morocco.  However, we discovered that when leaving a marina in Morocco, we would have to clear out of the country and then repeat the process in each new marina we visited, we decided that we would make the 5 day run to Lanzarote from Tangier, rather than hop down the Moroccan coast.  So we gave the 24 hour advance notice of departure to the marina and got ready to head off.  First thing the next morning, we headed over to the customs dock, ready to set out, only to find that the marina had not informed the customs officials of our impending departure, so we had to wait a couple of hours for confirmation that we could leave.  Once that was given, the customs officials once again boarded our boat, this time with a dog, to inspect everything before we left.  Once we had the all-clear, we headed out into a choppy sea, just hoping that we could put up with the choppiness until we rounded the tip of the headland into calmer waters.  Everything was fine once that happened, and we got the sails out.  In fact, this was one of the best crossings we have had, with great weather and sailing quite a large proportion of the time.  We had one day with no wind, but that was to be expected.  And when we were sailing, our wind vane worked beautifully – it’s so good that we have finally figured it out!

Five days after leaving Morocco, we were back in Schengen, in Puerto Calero, Lanzarote, with our African adventure over.  Now we really feel like we are on the homeward bound part of the trip, with planning starting for an Atlantic crossing.  Our European adventure has been amazing and we still have a month or so to go, but our thoughts have turned towards our friends back in the United States, and how we are looking forward to seeing them.  In particular we have been thinking about the friends who encouraged us to follow our dreams, at our pizza and puzzle nights in New Bern with Bob, Clare, Gaye and Wayne.  We miss you guys and hope to see you again really soon.

Offshore SSB WordPress Post

This is a quick test of the functionality of the SSB posting to our blog page. We will use this functionality to keep contact with friends and family during our crossing next month.

Back to Europe

Due to weather forecasts we had sailed from Tunisia and had arrived in Menorca a little earlier than planned. We decided to use the time to explore Mahon and then to check out some good anchorages to take our guests to, as Moray’s cousin and his partner were arriving soon to stay with us on the boat for four days.  Mahon is a pretty town built around a deep natural harbour with beautiful architecture and even better bakeries 🙂

The following day we set off in search of places to visit by boat. We passed by the only anchorage near to Mahon– Cala Teulera – which looked very busy, but would be a good spot for the end of our four day trip.  We then headed westwards along the south coast of the island. Cala en Porter looked like it would be a great place, if we got there early enough to get a spot, but not today, unfortunately, so we carried on round to Cala Son Bou, which is basically a mile long beach.  We dropped anchor, but were told we were too close to the yellow swimming area marker buoys, so we moved a little further away from the beach.  Luckily there was plenty of sand.

In an effort to improve the condition of the sea and sealife, the sea weed, Posidonia, is now protected and it is illegal to anchor on it.  There are even Posidonia police who come out to anchorages regularly to check that no one has anchored in the weeds.  Hefty fines can be issued, so most comply.

Anyway, safely anchored in sand, not Posidonia, and not too close to the swimming area, we settled in for the evening.  We had a swim to the shore and watched a nice sunset.

The next day we continued westward, marking down more potential anchorages, until we arrived at Cala Galdana.  This is a beautiful anchorage in a nice little resort town.  So long as you arrive early enough there is plenty of room to anchor!  Lots of boats come and go during the day, but most don’t stay long and by sunset, only a few boats are left.  There is a convenient place to leave the dinghy too, so a trip into town was easy.

We checked out a lovely restaurant and a bar, where we got to watch Andy Murray playing at Wimbledon!

There was a little wind the next day, so we decided to head out to sea, put out a fishing line and just drift for a while.  We didn’t catch anything but it was a lovely day!  Eventually, we turned back towards shore and dropped anchor next to a beach at Binigaus.  This was another lovely spot to swim in warm, clear water and we took full advantage, before heading back to Cala Teulera, near Mahon.  We checked back into the marina and cleaned up the boat, ready for our guests to arrive.  Their flight was delayed, but eventually they arrived and we headed out for a quick, welcome dinner, before settling them into the boat for their stay.  Callum had unfortunately hurt his leg, prior to the trip, and was on crutches, which isn’t the best way to be on a sailboat, but he managed really well.  It meant that sightseeing was out, but that was fine as we had found plenty of lovely beaches and swimming areas, which worked out well.

Our first anchorage was Cala en Porter.  We got there as early as possible and were lucky enough to get a great spot.

We had a lovely relaxing day, eating, chatting, swimming, sunbathing, drinking…my idea of a great holiday!  Next, it was a day of slow sailing and trolling for fish, before arriving at Cala Galdana again.  Mariona had spent time here with friends in the past, so it was nice to take her back there. We went out for a meal and enjoyed a nice sunset.

From there it was back to Cala Teulera to spend the night before, all too soon, Callum and Mariona would have to head back to Barcelona.  It was so lovely to have guests on board and to share a little taste of our life with them.  Thank you both, and we will see you soon!

It was time to start making our way through the Balearics now, so we headed back along the southern coast of Menorca, with a final stop at an anchorage called S’Aigua Dolca.  In the middle of the night, a front came through, bringing with it the hottest strong winds we have ever experienced.  It was a very strange experience, with the boat turning a full 360° during the short weather event.  Moray had to run out on deck and lash down the dinghy as the winds were in the high thirties but all was well and the next morning we set off bright and early for Mallorca.  We sailed and motorsailed to Porto Colom.  We were to spend a few days here, getting laundry done, grocery shopping, and generally fixing a few things on the boat.  Next we moved a little further down the coast to another nice swimming beach anchorage, before heading to Cala Major.  We paid a small fee to leave our dinghy in the local marina, while we took the bus to Palma.  We had a nice afternoon looking around the town including the Royal Palace of Almudaina, the Basílica de Santa María de Mallorca and the Arabian Baths before heading back to a very rolly anchorage.  Luckily, it settled down and we were able to get a good night’s sleep.

Next stop in Mallorca was another lovely anchorage, Cala Portals Vells.  By now we were well settled into a couple of days near a town, followed by a couple of days in beautiful beaches and bays, chilling and swimming! Our last night on Mallorca was spent in a bay close to the western tip so that we could make the jump to Ibiza without it being a very long day.

So, next stop – Ibiza.  We had hoped to visit the island of Cabrera, but anchoring is not allowed so you have to book a mooring ball, which proved impossible.  They got snapped up so fast, and we weren’t sure we wanted to go over there and take a chance that someone would free up a ball.  So instead we headed to Ibiza and the little town of Portinatx.  The anchorage was lovely, and there was a safe place to pull the dinghy up on to the beach for a trip into town.

After spending a couple of nights here, we moved on to what may have been my favourite place in the Balearics – Ses Balandres.  This anchorage is in a bay that is virtually impossible to enter, except by sea.  So there aren’t many people around and it is very relaxed.  When I say virtually cut off, watch Moray’s videos to see the only way in by land…

The only island left to see was Formentera, so we crossed over and anchored in a huge beach anchorage [Note: Three weeks later a $20 million dollar luxury yacht burned down to the waterline in the same anchorage].  The wind wasn’t right to go further round the island, which we think might have been nicer, but we enjoyed two nights here, swimming and watching the world go by, before leaving the Balearics for mainland Spain.

We did an overnight run, hoping to get our timing right to make the bridge opening into the Mar de Menor at 8am.  We went down the canal into a huge inland sea, not much more than 20ft deep anywhere!  We went to the south end of the lagoon and dropped anchor.  The first thing we noticed was that the water was full of huge purple jellyfish, so there wasn’t going to be any swimming!  But we took the dinghy into the marina, where they were happy for us to leave it.  We got some grocery shopping done and found a nice restaurant for later that evening.  Finally, I got some paella!

We spent a couple of nights here before setting off on our next overnight run.  The wind was great so we sailed, wing-on-wing, until dark, when the winds dropped.  We started motoring and around 7am, pulled into Almerimar fuel dock, to add enough fuel to get us to Morocco.  We set off again, and around 3:30pm, dropped anchor in Herredura.  This was a very deep anchorage, but there wasn’t much wind, and it was the best place to stop if we wanted to make it to Benalmedena marina the next day.  This was going to be a 3 day marina stop, mainly in order to get the boat surveyed.  We had insurance to cover us in the Med, but the insurance company wanted us to get a survey before insuring us to cross the Atlantic.  So we arrived in Benalmedena, and set to preparing the boat for the survey – cleaning, tidying, pulling all the paperwork together etc.  The survey itself went very smoothly.  Sol Purpose was hauled out of the water at 9am, and by 10:30, she was back in the water.  Moray took the opportunity to change out the dripless seal, which has needed to be done for a little while now.  While the boat was out of the water, I visited the local laundromat, right next to the boatyard, and took care of a LOT of laundry!

Back to the slip, and the survey continued – inside the boat and the rigging.  But by lunchtime, it was all done, so we would be able to head off the next day.

It wasn’t all work in Benalmedena though.  One of the strangest things we have done – and there have been a few! – was visit an ice bar!  We saw the bar, with a rack of fleecy coats and wraps outside.  Given that it was about 40°C outside, this seemed strange – but believe me, they were needed.  For €12 each, we got two cocktails each, served inside a deep freeze, where it was -18°C!  It was awful and wonderful, all at the same time!

Next stop was Sotogrande.  The run there from Benalmedena was strange as it was clear one minute, then thick fog the next, several times during the run.  There were also huge swells with the wind in our face, so we came in as close to the shore as we could, and eventually dropped anchor.  Our original plan was to stay here for the weekend, then go to Li Linea to clear out of Spain.  However, when we re-checked the weather forecast, we realised that some weather was coming which would make crossing the Gibraltar Straits impossible.  So we headed straight to La Linea passing Gibraltar on the way.

The Rock

We had hoped to be able to tie off to a customs dock, given that this is a port of entry into Spain, but were told we needed to pay for a slip for a night.  As we had to pay for one night, and as the weather forecast favoured it, we stayed the night, and first thing on Friday morning, we headed to the police station to get our passports stamped out of Spain.  We then started the not very long, but very difficult crossing across the Gibraltar Strait.  This stretch of water has some unique features.  The water in the Mediterranean is far saltier than the Atlantic.  Also, it evaporates far faster than the Atlantic, so instead of back and forth currents, water is constantly flowing onto the Mediterranean from the Atlantic.  This meant we would be motoring against the current for the west bound part of the crossing.  Also, as it is an incredibly busy shipping lane, when we turned to head south to Tangiers, we would have to go as fast as possible to stay out of the way of the commercial traffic.  All a bit daunting.  But with good planning and a bit of luck, we had an uneventful crossing, arriving in Morocco after a little over 7 hours for the 36 mile journey.  We pulled into the customs dock, where we were met by a very friendly mariner, who started our immigration process by taking our COVID documents to the police.  Once those were cleared, we headed up to customs and immigration.  A couple of hours later, after lots of form filling and a pretty thorough search of our boat – even looking in the storage under the mattress! – we were free to enter the country.  We went straight to the fuel dock and filled up with extremely inexpensive diesel, before heading into our slip.  We would be here for a few days before heading to the UK for a few weeks – family stuff, Schengen and the heat all need to be taken care of. 

So we have said farewell to the Mediterranean.  We have had a mixed experience.  It wasn’t what we expected in so many ways, partly, I suppose because when we started planning this, we didn’t have Schengen shuffle issues.  COVID has played a huge part too.  The paperwork and rules that change from town to town, let-alone country to country, have made this quite a mammoth logistics exercise.  We prefer to anchor, but in some places that has just not been an option and marinas can be very expensive here.  On the other hand, the beautiful water, swimming most days, the different cultures, the history, the food – need I say more!  We have been very fortunate to have experienced it all and we still have adventures to come! 

The trouble with Tunisia…

I don’t usually write much about our longer crossings because basically, if we are lucky, there isn’t much to write!  We motor some, we sail some, we don’t get enough sleep and we snack too much.  But this time I have to write a little something about our windvane.  This has been the bane of Moray’s life for a while now, as try as he might, he hasn’t been able to get it to work.  But research, perseverance and a little patience finally paid off!  The windvane worked beautifully, steering the boat in wonderful silence, with no drain on our batteries, and with a lot more stability than our electronic autopilot can manage at times.  I must admit, it’s not quite “set it up, set the sails and forget about it” that I had anticipated, but it works beautifully, so all is good there.

There is something to be said for being on the water without land in sight as these two videos show…

The end of our crossing was a little slow, because we didn’t want to arrive in the dark, so we had to slow down quite a lot, but at daybreak on Sunday morning, we pulled into Yasmine Hammamet Marina, completed the clearing and customs formalities (more on that later) and were guided into a slip.  Our first stop was Le Cap, a café right at the end of our dock, for a wonderful breakfast before setting about tidying the boat and planning our stay in Tunisia. 

We took a walk to the medina, where we found a little shop selling SIM cards.  €32 later, we were back online.

We hadn’t been able to find anything about where to get laundry done in Yasmine Hammamet, but on our stroll around the area, we found a lady with a tiny laundry at the far end of the marina, near the ubiquitous pirate ships!  For the princely sum of 30 TND (about €10), she washed, dried and folded three machine loads of laundry for us – wonderful!

During the first day, we also managed to meet up with Mike Turner.  He is the OCC port officer and had already been very helpful when we were planning our arrival.  He came past Sol Purpose, introduced himself, and gave us lots of useful information about the area, places to visit in the country, introductions to people running tours and some tips on dress etc. for me.  Tunisia is a Muslim country, and although some areas are relaxed about “summer clothing”, some more rural areas are not.  Always best to know, rather than cause any offence to anyone.

We don’t have air conditioning on the boat while out of the USA, so our plan had always been to leave the boat in the marina, rent a car and drive around the country for two weeks.  The car would be air conditioned, as would the hotels, so it would limit our time in the extreme heat.  Having studied a few of the coach tours available, it also appeared that we would probably get to see a lot more by doing it ourselves.  So we rented a car, brand new by the look of it, for two weeks and set off on a grand tour.  Our first visit was to Carthage, famous for Dido & Aeneas and, of course, Hannibal.  Tunisia has a lot of Roman history, as the Roman Empire took over when it defeated Hannibal.  You can be driving along and suddenly there are large parts of a Roman Aqueduct right in front of you!

Anyway, Carthage is a whole town which has been excavated, and shows clearly how a town was laid out, how it was defended etc.  There are Roman Baths, an Amphitheatre, and the town with temples, shops and houses.  I was particularly impressed with the mosaics which are in great condition. 

Next, we went to Sidi Bou Said, which is a very pretty town, with many of the buildings whitewashed and with blue front doors.  The doors are also decorated with black studs in various designs, which would denote the name of the family, or the type of business. 

We parked the car opposite a little café, and while I was across the street feeding the parking meter, a truck pulled up, with the bed full of clamps.  They checked all the cars in the parking lot for tickets, and clamped those who didn’t have one!  That would have been a nasty surprise to come back to after lunch!

Final stop for the day was to be Tunis.  Moray found a boutique hotel with availability that night, right in the Medina area of town, so we headed off to find it.  Now we have mentioned before that Google maps can’t always be relied on and boy, were we about to find that once again!  It kept sending us down narrower and narrower streets, until we came to a complete stop, either because the road was too narrow, or there was a market stall set up across the whole street!  We would turn round and try again, driving down different size streets, all with pedestrians wandering along them, and scooters going wherever they wanted, in whatever direction they wanted!  After almost an hour of going round in circles, we ended back at a spot we had passed several times, which said it was only 150 meters to the hotel.  There was a car park there, so we pulled into the car park and headed to the hotel on foot.  Yes, even though the hotel says it has parking, there is basically no way you could ever drive there!  Anyway, we had finally arrived, and were very pleasantly surprised when we were shown our room. 

After relaxing for a while and regaining our composure a little, we set out to investigate the Medina.  It was a great maze of little shops and stalls, selling everything you could imagine.  We finally managed to find a Tunisian flag for the boat and a little coin purse for me. 

Next we started looking for somewhere to eat.  Here comes the next lesson – everywhere you go in Tunisia, there are coffee shops – hundreds of coffee shops.  But if they serve food at all, it will be burgers or pizza.  We were ready to try some Tunisian food, but there was none to be had in the Medina.  That is because all the shops close at sunset and everyone goes home, so no restaurants.  We went back to the hotel and asked at reception and were told where the nearest group of restaurants were – about a 30 minute walk away.  So we set off, and eventually managed to find a restaurant where we had couscous – success.  We also managed to find a little bar in a hotel where we were able to get a beer, before heading back to our hotel.

The next morning, fortified with a delicious breakfast, we set off southwards, to Kairouan.  There were a couple of things we wanted to see here – the famous water retention basins and the mosques.    Moray was keen to see the basins which are supposed to be quite a feat of engineering and beautiful to look at.  Unfortunately, three years without rain has rendered them empty and unattractive.  Worse still, they are full of trash (more on that later).  So it was on to the mosques.  Most mosques have signs saying that non-Muslims cannot enter, but there are a couple in Kairouan where the courtyards are open at certain times for everyone.  We visited the Great Mosque first, followed by the Zaouia of Sidi Sahab (or the Barber’s Mosque).  In both cases, the intricate stone, tile and plasterwork is stunning to see. 

After spending some time in Kairouan, we headed to Sousse, where we had booked a room in an hotel on the beach.  Sousse was once a thriving resort town, but following a terrorist attack against tourists in 2015, business fell off.  Add COVID-19 to the mix and you have a very tired-looking resort.  Our hotel had definitely seen better days, but it was clean and comfortable, and very cheap, so no problem.  We took a stroll into the town, where we found a new, thriving hotel, with a sushi restaurant, so we booked a table for that evening and then took a walk along the beach.  The sushi meal was good, as was the bar across the street from our hotel.  All-in-all, a good place if it can recover from COVID-19.

Our first stop the next day was the Ribat in Monastir.  This is familiar to a lot of people as it featured as the town in “The Life of Brian”.  We had a great time wandering through this old fortress, trying to figure out where each of the scenes in the movie had been set!

Next was El Djem.  If you can imagine the Colosseum in Rome, without the crowds and the exorbitant prices for each section, you have El Djem.  Much of the structure is intact or restored and you are free to wander where you like for the one admission price, including the subterranean passages.  It was a wonderful experience!

On the drive between our destinations, we passed through many small towns as we had the previous day and so I think its only fair to show the normal as well as the stunning historical aspects of Tunsia.

After El Djem, we continued on to Sfax, where we had booked an apartment for a night. There wasn’t anything particular to see here, but it was a good stopping point in our journey.  Once again, Google Maps was able to get us in the general vicinity, but we had to call the proprietor who showed up on a bicycle and guided us to the car park, right next to the house, but we would never have found it in a month of Sundays!

Djerba was to be the next stop on our travels and involved our first real foray into arrid landscapes.

Djerba was known as the Land of the Lotus Eaters in the Odyssey, where Odysseus’ crew ate the lotus blossoms and forgot all about returning to Ithaca.  With high hopes for a beautiful resort stay for a couple of days, we headed to the ferry.  It costs less than a euro to take the ferry across to Djerba, but given the two hour wait to get on the ferry, it might have been better to just drive further south and take the bridge!

Eventually we arrived, and took a little drive around before heading to our hotel.  We went to Houmt Souk, a marina on the island that we had contemplated clearing in at. We were glad that we chose Hammamet in the end as this marina was very basic. For all our TMCA friends, there was a pirate ship called the Elyssa 🙂

These two days were to be more about relaxing than sightseeing.  I was looking forward to pool or beach time!  As we were to find pretty much everywhere, COVID-19 has seriously hit the tourist industry here and the hotels look run down, or aren’t offering all the amenities they once did.  The pool looked lovely in the photos, but in reality, the water wasn’t particularly clean.  There was a nice looking bar right next to the pool, where we enjoyed a drink before heading to bed.  Unfortunately, although we thought our night was ending, the bar (which we now know is not owned by the hotel, even though it is on hotel property) was just getting started.  As our lovely room overlooked the pool, we had to listen to very loud, Tunisian house music until 3:30am!  The next morning, Moray, along with others that we now know of through their reviews of the hotel, all asked to be moved to other rooms.  We ended up at the far end of the hotel, overlooking the street, in a much smaller room, but it was quiet!  We also managed to get a beach day in, although that required some effort to get loungers on the hotel’s private section of the beach.  But eventually, we were relaxing, under a beach umbrella, on loungers.  Lovely!

Now we began the Saharan portion of our journey. We took the bridge back to the mainland and drove to Chenini, which is an old berber town, built into the hillside.  The buildings were fascinating, especially the old mill we found.

Then on to Ksar Ouled Soltane, which is an old fortified granary.  The multi-level granary system is very well preserved here and you might recongise it in the photos –it was used as a filmset in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.

We drove to our airbnb in Tatouine – a lovely house, with private parking – and it was easy to find on Google Maps!  Our host was charming and suggested a couple of places to eat, which was great as finding places to eat had been proving difficult in some of the towns.  Lots of restaurants have closed down, and some I wasn’t comfortable with as there were no women inside.  The place he suggested I probably wouldn’t have gone if he hadn’t assured us it would be ok, and it was a great choice.  Rotisserie chicken, couscous with vegetables – all really inexpensive – and the owner of the restaurant seemed thrilled to have foreign customers.  He was desperate to ensure we enjoyed our meal, which we did.

Our next day was a drive through the Sahara, on relatively good roads I hasten to add. 

Miles and miles of sand, and nothing else, except people in roadside stands selling drinks, fuel and food.  How they get enough trade and manage to just sit there all day, I can’t fathom, but they do it.  After driving for a couple of hours, we stopped at a roadside cafe at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. The owner didn’t speak any English and just a little French, but between us, we managed to get coffee, tea, and some delicious berber bread, with olive oil.  The café was tiny, but the walls were covered with scribblings from previous travellers.

We carried on through the desert, past little groups of camels, until we reached Douz, our stop for the night.

We first stopped at the Souk to buy turbans, which the proprietor kindly demonstrated how to put on. 

Then on to the hotel, where we found a lovely clean pool, even if the water had a strange taste!  We had dinner at the hotel buffet that night, then off for an early night.

At 8am, we were picked up by Saharansky Tours, who drove us a short way out into the desert to meet our guide, Abdul, and our transport – Aziz, Mustafa and Sultan!  Having been shown a second way to tie the turbans, we were now suitably attired for our two hour camel ride into the Sahara desert.  It was a remarkably gentle ride, more comfortable than a horse, apart from when the camels need to sit down to let us on or off.  I didn’t realize what gentle creatures camels are! I rode Aziz, Moray rode Mustafa, and Sultan was a trainee camel, learning the route!  Abdul walked the whole way.  He learned the desert from his father and he is teaching it to his son, although he told me he wants his son to go to school and not be a guide.

After two hours or so, we arrived at our camp.  There are traditional berber tents, along with some more western style tents, but the latter are beautifully decorated inside to look like the berber tents.  There is also a shower and toilet block to cater for us softy westerners!

It was incredibly hot by this time, so a siesta was in order.  Around 5pm, we took another 2 hour ride, this time into the dunes.  Abdul pointed out the regions where the Bedouins take their herds of goats in the spring.  He pointed out the Libyan border, which is heavily guarded as there is a lot of smuggling – people fuel etc.

After taking in the indescribably beautiful sunset we were back at the camp for dinner.  Abdul showed us the traditional Bedouin way of baking bread – the dough is punched out, almost like a pizza base, and then buried in the sand under hot embers.

After about 15 minutes, it is removed, cleaned of sand and ready to eat – and it’s delicious.  Along with the salad, lamb stew, brik (a fried pastry stuffed with egg and cheese), and fresh fruit, it was a wonderful dinner.  We were the only people in the camp (again, COVID has done its worst), so they had brought beds outside the tents in case we wanted to sleep outside.  Once the sun went down, the temperature was great, so we slept under the stars.  I don’t have words for how lovely that was.

The next morning, after breakfast (and after Abdul had rounded up two of the camels who had gone walkabout!) we headed back to Douz.  It was a fabulous experience and I am so glad we got to spend some time in the desert.  It’s so vast and so quiet, it’s easy to think and realise how small your problems are.

Back to the car, and we drove across the Chott El Djend salt lakes to Tozeur.  We took a look around the souk before heading to our hotel.

yes, that’s a camels head. It shows the butcher has fresh meat!

Here we found an amazing pool, very clean and no funny taste!  After a couple of hours relaxing by the pool, and a reasonable dinner, we called it a night.  We were picked up at 8am by our next Saharansky tour guide, Imen.  He took us on a 4×4 excursion into the desert.  We drove off road, among the dunes to various sites which have been used as film sets.  The first was a structure used in Dune.

The set was built, the filming was done, and then it was just abandoned.  The Tunisians are making use of it as a tourist destination, but you can’t help wondering why the filmmakers weren’t required to clear the site after filming.  Next it was on to the canyon that was used in the Tuscen Raiders attack in Star Wars.

After that it was the Star Wars village, by way of some serious off roading and steep drops. Unfortunately the desert is much like the sea, in that videos and pictures don’t really convey the height or steepness of the dunes/seas.

The village has now been taken over by traders selling cold drinks, knick knacks, photo ops with captured desert foxes…

behind the scenes

not part of the set 🙂

After the tour, we went back into Tozeur for a look around as it was market day.  We also managed to find a barber so that Moray could get a much needed haircut!  Then we enjoyed a restful afternoon by the pool and one more night in Tozeur before heading to El Kef, near the Algerian border.  Along the route we saw camel crossing signs, which we couldn’t resist photographing.

On the way, we stopped at Sbeitla, which is another Roman town.  I was thrilled to be able to actually walk into a Roman temple, as they are usually closed off.  There were also fantastic mosaics here. 

We arrived in El Kef and eventually (no thanks once more to Google!) found our Airbnb.  Once settled in, we went to look at the Basilica and the Fortress, before heading into town to get a pizza!

We had planned to spend three more days travelling around the country, but we had been keeping an eye on the weather, and realised that if we wanted a good window to get to Menorca in time to meet our visitors, we needed to leave very soon.  So after a fabulous breakfast, we left El Kef and drove straight back to Yasmine Hammamet Marina.

The landscape had changed considerably since we left Tozuer and we were now driving through more arable land.

We prepared everything for departure, and had a farewell gathering with Mike and Jo, ready to leave the next day.

OK, I have told you all about the amazing experiences we had while travelling around Tunisia.  Now, I feel that I have to give an honest opinion about the not so good side of our experiences in Tunisia. 

First of all, the country is like a big rubbish dump.  Everywhere you go, there are huge piles of plastic and trash.  There are even plastic bags looking like the fruit of trees, there are so many.  People throw trash out of the car windows or while they are walking down the street.  And every now and then, driving through the beautiful desert, you come across a huge rubbish dump.  It is a real shame when the people of a country don’t seem to have any pride in how it looks.

The tourism industry in the country has been very badly hit by the terrorist attack in 2015, and of course, by COVID-19.  Lots of businesses have closed, and many hotels are open, but without restaurants, gyms, spas etc..   Some tourist sites are not open at all.

We are fairly experienced travellers now, and we do our best to respect the cultures of the country we are in, which often differ greatly from what we are used to.  We also have carefully considered reports of corruption and problems in other countries.  Everyone’s experiences can be vastly different, and if we had listened to all the horror stories, we would never have visited Albania, Croatia and Montenegro, all of which were fantastic.  We knew that in the past, there had been a problem with officials asking for “gifts”, and that the suggestion on noonsite was to offer patisserie rather than cash.  On other sites, we had heard that the government has been trying to crack down on this and discourages offering anything.  So when we arrived in Yasmine Hammamet at the beginning of June, we were a little disappointed but not surprised when the port police officer asked us for a gift.  When we said we didn’t have anything he shrugged it off.  We thought that this would probably be the case when leaving.  So on our arrival back in Yasmine Hammamet, on Sunday, Moray visited the Capitainerie (the port office), the Port Police, the Garde Nacionale and the fuel dock.  In each case he told them he planned on leaving Tunisia the next day, and asked what he needed to do.  In each case he was told to come back the following day with all the paperwork and clear out then.  As for the fuel dock, he was told to come at 4pm.  He told them how much fuel we would need and found out how much that would cost, and that it needed to be paid in cash.  Tunisia has a closed currency, meaning Tunisian dinar can only be acquired in Tunisia, and you can’t leave with any (there would be no point as you can’t exchange them anywhere).  So on Monday, we made a large enough withdrawal to pay for the fuel, leaving us with less than the equivalent of €1.  Moray went to the Capitainerie and settled up our bill, then we headed to the fuel dock.  On arrival, we were told there was no fuel available.  We explained that we had made an appointment, but he said he had just filled two other boats and now had no fuel.  After getting nowhere, a port police officer intervened and said that a tanker would be arriving, but that in the meantime, they could jerry can the fuel from another fuel place to our boat.  The fuel dock owner then came and asked us for a gift for him to give to the young man who would be lugging the jerry cans.  Now we are well aware that he only wanted cash, and that it would never reach the young man who was doing the work.  Also, we didn’t have any cash, so we said no.  At that point, he said, “No gift, no fuel” and walked away.  We were now in a fix, because our weather window was disappearing and we didn’t have enough fuel to make it to Spain.  The thought of waiting until the next morning was awful, so Moray asked “ok, what can I give as a gift”.  The response was “It’s too late”.  Getting desperate now, Moray headed to the Capitainerie, which we know is trying to actively discourage this practice.  He came over to try to smooth over the situation.  Eventually he said that another tanker would be coming in about an hour, so we would be able to get fuel then.  We thanked him and decided to go the Garde Nacionale to start the process of clearing out.  The Officer asked when we planned to leave and we said, today.  The response was “No, tomorrow”.  Apparently, they now require that you give 24 hours’ notice that you are intending to leave the country.  When we explained that Moray had been in that office the previous afternoon, he changed his attitude a little but said that he couldn’t find the necessary paperwork to let us leave.  He tried calling his boss, but was told that no, there were no exceptions, we couldn’t leave that day.  Utterly frustrated, we started to panic a little.  Then the officer said he would be at work at 5am, and we could clear out then if we wanted.  We took that offer.  Then the fuel arrived, and a very sour-faced fuel dock owner filled our tanks.  He made a point of very carefully and publicly counting the money I gave him.  That done, we moved the boat back to the Customs dock, ready to settle in for the night.

At 5am, the port police officer arrived and started the paperwork to let us leave.  Once that was done, he took our passports to get them stamped.  Once he had our passports in his hand, he asked us for a gift.  We said we had less than 1 dinar left.  Moray offered him a bottle of wine, which he refused.  Still holding our passports, he started to walk away from the boat.  Moray followed him, only to be shown a picture on the officer’s phone of emergency flares.  He asked if we had any of these, to which Moray, of course, said yes.  So Moray came back to the boat and took two of our expired flares to hand over as a gift.  Then our passports were stamped and we got out of there as fast as we could.

It left a very nasty taste in our mouths.  If we had flown into the country, where the officials are under scrutiny, no one would have asked for a gift.  And let’s be honest, it’s not a gift, its blackmail.  Boaters are not so lucky and so are expected to put up with this practice.  And as long as we comply, it will continue.  So, with a heavy heart, I would say that I would not recommend any of our fellow boaters go to Tunisia, until the country has sorted itself out.

We have now arrived safely in Menorca.  We were very concerned about the weather given that we left 12 hours later than planned, but we managed to get updated weather reports by swinging close by Sardinia, where we could get an internet connection, and then taking a slightly roundabout route to avoid the unfavourable winds.  In the end, it turned out to be an uneventful journey, and we are now enjoying the sunshine, clean town and wonderful tapas that is Mahon, Menorca!

Gorgeous Greece!

Our first full day in Corfu, we planned to have a lazy morning, then head to do some sightseeing before meeting up with Kim & Steve (Mimpi) and Laurie, Alec & Jack (Gratitude) for dinner.  Corfu town is a beautiful town, with two fortresses.  There are many reminders of the island’s Venetian period, with stunning buildings and porticoes. 

There is also an amazing cathedral.  We were particularly fascinated by the range of sizes of the votive candles – just how naughty have you been to need the largest ones?

One thing we had planned to do was buy a SIM card so that we would have internet access, but we had totally forgotten that many shops close from 1pm to 5:30pm!  So we were forced to stop at a café while we waited!  We then started to walk back towards the store, when we bumped into our friends, who had just arrived from Gouvia Marina!  We walked together for a while looking around the town, when we discovered a spa that had fish which will give you a pedicure.  Moray and Steve have done this before so decided to take the pictures while the rest of us had a go!  I think the pictures tell it all!  The poor assistant had to walk away, she was laughing so hard!

Feet suitably beautiful, we next headed to a little taverna.  I was very excited to see that moussaka was on the menu.  I had been raving about moussaka to Kim, who decided that she would try it, as did Moray.  When it came time to place the order, the waiter explained that they only had one portion of Mama’s Moussaka left.  We looked so disappointed he disappeared off to the kitchen, then re-emerged saying that, yes, there would be enough for all of us.  While we were eating out appetisers, a car pulled up, and more moussaka was delivered from Mama’s house!  Wonderful!  And it really was the best I have ever had!

After a lovely evening together, it was time to say our goodbyes.  Gratitude and Mimpi will be spending three months in Greece, so their route would be slower than ours.  In order to complete our route back to the Caribbean, while complying with the Schengen limitations, we would just have the one month to fit in as much as possible.

The next morning, we walked to the airport where we rented a car.  First stop was Gouvia Marina, where we were finally able to get a SIM card and a replacement navigation light unit.  Then we set off and travelled around the north end of Corfu, taking in as many of the sights as possible.  We visited caves, monasteries, castles and pretty little towns – always, of course, at the top of a winding mountain road…

All too soon it was time to leave Corfu and continue on our way.  Our planned stop for the night was a bay called Nisida Sivota North.  After a short run, we arrived and dropped anchor.  We ate lunch and were relaxing when it felt as though the anchor was dragging.  We pulled it up, ready to reset when two day-trip passenger boats came in and basically forced us to leave 😛  Disappointed, we looked for another place to stop.  There was another lovely little bay, Mesa Bela Vraka, which we had originally decided against because the reviews had said it was too busy.  But this early in the season, there were just a few boats there and we spent a very pleasant evening.

The next stop was on the mainland, in a place called Preveza.  There is a large boatyard here, with a couple of marinas, but we dropped anchor just outside the marina, in the bay.  It wasn’t a particularly pretty place, but we planned to get some sightseeing done here and this anchorage offered the best protection from the strong Easterly winds we were experiencing.  Again, we walked to the airport and rented a car for the day.  Just north of Preveza are the remains of Nikopolis, a town built by Octavian (later known as Caesar), to commemorate his victory over Anthony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium.  There were some amazing mosaics to be seen, as well as a wonderful theatre.

We continued on to see the Dance of Zalongi – a commemoration of the women who, when faced with capture, danced themselves and their children off the cliffs to their death.  Once again, it was quite a climb, but Moray assures me that the views were spectacular!

From there we went to the ruins of Cassope.

On the way back, we stopped at a beach bar for a well earned drink. It was still very early in the season so most places were basically empty….

We headed back to the airport to drop off the car.  We started walking back to the marina, when the car rental guy stopped and picked us up, dropping us off at the marina café!

The next morning we set off at 9am, planning on arriving at the Lefkada Canal in time for the 11am opening.  Our timing was almost perfect and we didn’t have to wait too long before the bridge pulled back to let us into the canal.  Almost before it felt like we were through, the bridge pushed back into place….

A couple of hours later, we dropped anchor in Palairos.  We had added this stop to our itinerary as our neighbours from Montenegro, Sue & John (Lady M) were to be based here for the summer, as flotilla leaders for a boat charter company.  We planned on getting laundry done here, as it was the first place we had seen with a laundromat.  The place was tiny, with only two washers and two dryers.  Both the washers had a load in, though one appeared not to be working.  After much to-ing and fro-ing by the owner, manager and various customers, it turned out that the electric circuit can’t handle four machines at once!  I hope the owner manages to get that sorted before it gets busy there!  Anyway, between Moray, the owner and Sue, we managed to get all the laundry washed and most of it dry, with the rest hanging off the lifelines of the boat.

While that was happening, we met with Sue & John on Lady M for drinks and to catch up with the news of the couple of months since they had left Porto Montenegro.  Later we headed out to a nearby taverna for drinks and mezes, followed by – would you believe it – an Indian meal!  It was great!

After a lazy start to the next day, followed by a little grocery shopping, we pulled up anchor and headed to Ormos Atherinos West.  This is a tiny bay, and when we arrived, there were already two boats there, so we went round to the other side of the island and dropped anchor for a few hours.  We swam and had lunch and generally relaxed.  Then, as happens in a lot of the bays, most other boats head back to harbours for the night, so we went back to our original choice of bay and dropped anchor for the night.  Almost immediately after we got settled, another boat took the remaining spot.  A couple of other boats tried to find a spot, but the water was too deep so they moved on, leaving us a beautiful, secluded spot for the night.

We decided that the lunchtime stop en route to our evening destination had worked out well, so the next day we spent a few hours in Formikoula, again, swimming and eating lunch.  When it was time to head off, we went to Kastos.  This little town has a harbour which (as in so many towns in the Ionian) is free to use, first come, first served.  In order to get as many people in as possible, you have to back into the space, dropping your anchor as you go.  It is an extremely difficult manoeuvre, especially if you have no bowthruster, your boat doesn’t like to go backwards in a straight line, and there is any cross wind.  We decided that we would be better off dropping anchor in a nearby bay, and taking the dinghy in to the harbour.  We pulled the dinghy up on to the beach, where Lady M was hosting a beach rum punch party for their two flotilla crews.  We joined them for dinner in Belos, a wonderful restaurant, hosted by Maria.  Moray and I both had the slow cooked lamb – delicious!

It was time now to visit Ithaca, the legendary home of Odysseus – and the place he spent ten long years trying to get back to!  We dropped anchor in Vathy harbour, and spent a little while watching the charter boats coming and going.  We had found a place online that offers scooter rentals, but when we got there, he wasn’t yet open for the season.  He kindly called another place and sent us there to get a scooter.

our steed for the day!

We spent a very pleasant afternoon travelling around the north end of Ithaca, visiting Odysseus’ palace and some very beautiful little harbours.

Next was Kephalonia.  Our original choice of anchorage was Sami, but there was a lot of swell, so we went up the coast a little to the harbour in Agia Efimia.  There was plenty of room to drop anchor, right in front of the pretty little town.  Once again, we rented a scooter, from Road Runners, right on the waterfront.    This time, it turned out that we were the first customer that season, so he gave us a little upgrade – a 150cc scooter for the price of a 125cc!

We made good use of the scooter, visiting first the Melissani and Drogarati Caves.  The first is done by boat, with a surreal feel of being on an underground gondola.  It was incredibly beautiful.

The second is a long climb down, but stunning stalagmites and stalagtites.

We drove up the west coast to Assos, followed by Fiskardo, on the North East tip of the island, then back down to Agia Efimia, where we dropped off the scooter before heading back to Sol Purpose.

We had planned to carry on to another anchorage at the south end of Kephalonia the next morning, but decided to head back over to the mainland.  We spotted a beautiful little beach that wasn’t marked as an anchorage, but it was shallow enough, and very well protected, so we stopped.  We got in and swam, and watched a few other boats pass by heading to a marked anchorage.  We had the whole beach to ourselves all night – it was idyllic.

Now it was time for a change of pace.  We left the anchorage and went to Messolonghi Marina, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth.  Usually, this marina requires stern to mooring, with fixed lines (like Montenegro), but as they weren’t busy, they let us pull up alongside, which is so much easier for us.  Just an aside – this marina has suffered badly because of the closure of the Corinth Canal.  As no one can get through the canal to Athens and the Aegean, it seems that they are bypassing the Gulf of Corinth altogether.  It’s a shame because there are some very pretty little places to stop.  Hopefully, once the canal reopens, things will pick up in the area.  Having said that, we chose Messolonghi as a safe place to leave Sol Purpose for a few days, while we did a whistle stop tour of the Peloponnese and Athens.  It has been over 40 years since I fell in love with Greece on a school trip, and I wanted Moray to see the places that had been influential in my choice to study Classics at University.   Messolonghi Marina has an onsite car rental office, so it was a two minute walk to get a car!  So Tuesday morning, we packed a bag, picked up the car and headed off to Delphi, home to the Temple of Apollo and the all-seeing Oracle.  I have to confess, I didn’t recall Delphi being such a climb!  But my memory of the beauty of the area, imagining the “pilgrims” heading up the road to the Oracle to find out what their future held, was not mistaken.  We visited the Museum first to set the scene for what Delphi was about, and I was thrilled once again to see “The Charioteer”.  This is a bronze statue depicting a participant in one of the Chariot races that would have been held at the Games.  An earthquake buried the statue and nearly all of the chariot and horses were destroyed, but he remains pretty much intact.  And given that he would have been standing inside a chariot, so you wouldn’t have known if it were otherwise, his feet are perfect!  I guess when you are honouring the gods, perfection is the order of the day!

After the museum we headed up through the site, past the navel of the earth, to the race track.  It was pretty cool to be able to call my Mum and wish her Happy Birthday from there!

After several hours enjoying Delphi, we got back in the car and drove to Athens.  After a scary few minutes dealing with the most insane roundabout I have every experienced, we reached our little hotel.  Moray dropped the car in the garage, and we headed off to do a bit of sightseeing.  We stopped at a café and had a drink and mezes, before heading to Syntagma Sqaure to watch the Changing of The Guard.

The movements in the little dance seem strange to someone used to watching the Guards in London, but apparently they were originally designed to help the blood circulation of the young men who have to stand so still for so long in the heat.  After watching the Changing of the Guard, we walked through the city up to the funicular railway to get to the top of Mount Lycavettos.  The views of Athens from this high point are spectular.

After heading back to the hotel for a shower, we then went out to a couple of bars in the area before calling it a night.

The next day was a busy one.  18^th May was International Museum Day and the entrance fee for all the museums and monuments in the country were waived.  Despite it being very early in the season, we guessed that this would mean lots of visitors, so we got up early to visit the Acropolis.  It was still busy but so worth it.  We are still trying to figure out how on earth they got those huge pieces of marble up to the site and then lifted them up to build, given how much damage has been done trying to take pieces down!  I can’t even begin to describe the Acropolis in a way that would do it justice, so here are some pictures that I hope will help.

After exploring the Acropolis and the museum, we headed over to Monastiraki, to have a much needed cold drink before exploring the streets with the quirky cafes, shops selling traditional crafts etc.

Next, it was back to the car to drive to Mycenae, the city ruled by Agamemnon, according to Homer.  We saw the gold death mask, which Heinrich Schlieman is purported to have assumed was the Face of Agamemnon, as well as passing through the Lion Gate.

It was now getting to be late afternoon, so we drove a little further to Epidaurus, where we had booked a room for the night.  On the recommendation of the owner, we went to the port, to a little taverna.  It was a great meal, one of the best we had in Greece.  Aubergines, steamed in wine, are amazing!

The wonderful food continued the next morning.  We sat outside, while the hotel staff kept bringing more and more food – fresh orange juice from the trees that were everywhere around the hotel, bread with orange marmalade and honey, an omelette with ham, tomatoes and feta cheese, yoghurt with quince – fantastic!  I must admit, I stole a couple of oranges from their trees for our journey home…

This was the final day of our whistle stop tour, so we drove to Olympia, to visit the original home of the Olympic Games.  The Olympic Flame is still lit here every four years for the Modern Olympics.  The columns remaining here are another example of how huge these temples were and how important it was to the Greeks to honour their gods.  The site is to this day being excavated and it was interesting to watch how painstaking the archaeologists are now.

Moray even got to take a run on the original Olympic race track!

Finally, a drive over the bridge crossing the Gulf of Corinth, before heading back to Messolonghi.

All in all, it was an exhausting three days but I absolutely loved every minute!

After returning the car and checking out with the port police, we started one of our longest runs of the month, from Messolonghi back to Kephalonia.  We headed down to the south end of the island and tucked into a bay on the eastern tip, called Katelios.  After an exhausting few days, it was nice to jump in the water for a swim!

We made a very early start the next morning for Zakynthos.  On the west side of the island is a little bay called Shipwreck Beach.  Whatever you believe about the origins of the boat, there is indeed a shipwreck on this beach, which is inaccessible by land, unless, as Moray has seen on video, you base jump!  This is one of the biggest tourist attractions on the island, so we wanted to get there early, before all the tour boats arrived.  The swell is horrendous, so it was a bit daunting, but we got in to the totally deserted cove safely.  We swam to shore to explore and take some pictures of the completely empty beach.  We were very lucky, but shortly afterwards, a boat arrived with men and equipment to build a lifeguard watch station, right in front of the shipwreck!  We swam back to the boat and headed back round the north of the island, being passed by at least 20 tour boats – I guess we did the right thing being there so early!

We rounded the top of the island and headed back down the east side to a little harbour called Agios Nikolaos (or, more commonly, Kostas’ place!).  Kostas has placed some very good mooring balls in one end of the harbour, which are free to use, first come, first served.  He came to help us pick up the – very substantial – line, and pointed out his restaurant.  Shortly afterwards, we received a WhatsApp message from his local rival, Dimitrios, who owns the harbour and a restaurant at the other end of the island!  The forecast was for very strong winds that afternoon, which proved right.  It was too windy for us to get the dinghy off the deck and into the water, so Kostas picked us up to go to his restaurant and then brought us home safely.

After lunch the following day, we continued southwards, dropping the anchor outside Zaknthos Town harbour for the night.  Our final stop in Zakynthos was to be in the National Marine Park.  We hadn’t a huge number of options, because May to October is the breeding season for Loggerhead Turtles who make their way back to the National Marine Park every year.  Parts of the park are completely off limits, some you can take your boat, but not anchor, and in one small section anchoring is permitted.  We were happy to find that there weren’t many other boats, so we chose a spot in Laganas Beach and dropped the anchor into the sand, in 8ft deep, crystal water.

The whole time we were here, the tour boats were constant, looking for turtles.  Some were quite aggressive with the poor creatures, which was a little upsetting.  But we enjoyed seeing large numbers of turtles all around the bay, next to the boat from time to time.  We took the dinghy out for an hour or so, and drifted around the bay, being careful not to point at anything when we spotted a turtle, to prevent the other boats from showing up!  When we were heading back to the boat, we spotted a turtle in the swimming area, so Moray got in the water with the Go-Pro, and swam with him for a while.  Very cool!

Laganas is very touristy, with a lot of bars, clubs and restaurants.  We took a walk along the beach and had a cocktail in one of the bars, but then headed back away from the beach to see what else was around.  We stopped in a bar called Sugar, where we chatted for a while with a character, Harry, the manager.  We asked for a restaurant recommendation, and headed off to Panos.  As we arrived, Harry showed up to return Moray’s baseball cap, which he had left in the bar!  The recommendation was a good one and we loved our meal.  Afterwards we stopped back in to Sugar to have another drink, before heading back to the boat.

Our month in Greece was drawing to a close, so it was time to head back over to the mainland.  The first stop was outside Katakolon harbour.  The next night was intended to be Proti West, but when we got there, we weren’t at all comfortable with the anchorage.  We headed to Marathoni, but didn’t like that either, so we continued on down to Voidokilia Bay.  This proved to be a great place to stop.  It was a little bit rolly, but not unbearable at all, and the water was very clear and very shallow – just look at the videos!

We swam several times, hiked up to Nestor’s Cave and the castle – a beautiful place to relax for a couple of days.

All too soon, our month was over.  We anchored outside Pilos harbour for two nights, using the time to get ready to leave.  Moray replaced the navigation lights and gave the hull of the boat a clean, while I prepared some meals to eat en route.  We had a lovely meal on our last night in Greece in O Aetos restaurant on the waterfront.  Who would have thought that feta cheese, wrapped in phyllo pastry and drizzled with honey could be so delicious!

The Greek

On the morning of May 31, we tied off to the harbour wall, where a fuel truck met us to provide us with fuel for the journey.  Then it was visits to the port police and passport control, and then it was time to leave for a five day passage to Tunisia.

We can’t stress enough how much we loved our month in Greece and how sad we were to leave so soon.  But rules are rules, and our time is now limited, so it’s on to the next adventure!

Spring comes to Montenegro

I’ve just realized that pretty much the whole of winter has passed without a blog update  😛  So here goes!

After arriving back in Porto Montenegro from the UK, we settled in for the rest of the winter.  The weather was cold and very windy a lot of the time, but beautiful just the same.  Waking up in a cozy, warm boat to see snow on the surrounding mountains was amazing.

There is a great liveaboard community spending the winter here, so we have had lots of fun together.  I convinced a few of the ladies to try knitting, so we started a little “knit and natter” group on Wednesday afternoons.  Each week, we were on a different boat, which was fun and we had a good time, chatting and learning to knit.  Eventually work, departures and trips home depleted our little group until there were only three but we have kept on going and I couldn’t be more proud of my remaining fellow knitters, Kim, from Mimpi, and Laurie, from Gratitude!  I do hope you keep it up after we all go our separate ways, ladies!

Some days, the weather was warm, so a group of us took a road trip to Sveti Stefan and Budhva, followed by a meal at the Nacionalni restoran Carevic.  We were seated at a great table, overlooking the Adriatic, and as our drinks arrived, we got to watch the sunset!  What a great place!

Porto Montenegro Marina takes care of its winter residents very well.  The pizza and bowling evenings continued, which we enjoyed, along with paintball and hiking, which was offered, but wasn’t for us at the time.  We also took up the offer that comes with a winter contract to use the marina’s ski lodge, along with 5 friends from other boats.  When we left Tivat, it was dry and sunny, and we wondered just how good the ski resort was going to be.  After a couple of hours driving along terrifying (well for me, at least) windy mountain roads we arrived at Kolasin.  Our ski lodge for the weekend was a 6-bedroom lodge, with kitchen and dining room, about a 20 minute drive from the ski resorts.  We were the first to arrive, so we picked the best room 🙂 and then took a drive up to the first of the two resorts.  The car park was treacherous, but we made it safely to the resort.  While we had a drink in the sunshine, we considered whether we wanted to ski here.  Bearing in mind, I have never skied before, and I was somewhat nervous watching people falling on the ski lifts!

We decided to head on up to the next resort and take a look there.  It was much better.  The car park was safe, and it just seemed much more geared to novices.  They even have a magic carpet on the novice slope, where you just stood on the carpet and it brought you back to the top on a conveyor belt!

We booked lessons for the following morning for the group and found out that we really needed to get there early, in order to rent skis, boots etc.  Armed with all this information, we headed back to the town of Kolasin, where we found a grocery store and bought snacks for the evening.  Just as we got back to the lodge, the others arrived, so we spent time sorting out rooms, discussing the information we had discovered about the skiing and having pre-prandials!  Once everyone was settled in, we headed into Kolasin to a little restaurant called Konoba Nisavic.  There was a lovely open fire burning, and it was a cozy, relaxed place.  The food was absolutely delicious, too!

Back at the lodge, we had a mini games night.  Lou and I played Rummikub, while Sharon worked on her knitting!  Moray, John, Ray and Chas played Texas Hold’Em.  I guess they were all enjoying it as the noise level rose to the point the three ladies sitting next to each other were having to yell!  Knowing I was going to have to get up early the next day, I headed off to bed, with Sharon and Lou not far behind me.  Once the poker was done, an even more raucous game of Pass the Pigs started!  I have no idea how it is played, but it involves a lot of whooping and hollering 🙂  Eventually, Lou rescued us all by telling the boys it was time for bed if they intended hitting the slopes the next day!

Bright and early next morning, after a quick breakfast, John and Sharon, Moray and I headed up to the resort.  Chas is an experienced skier, so was going to come along later and head straight to the slopes, while Lou and Ray hadn’t planned on skiing, but instead wanted to hike around the town.

Once at the resort, my excitement at learning to ski was beginning to turn into fear.  I remembered that I really wasn’t keen on heading down a slippery slope, on two thin planks, which is why I had never been skiing before!  Oh well, too late now.  Once locked into the ski boots, the first thing was to learn a whole new way of walking!  Then it was out to the nursery slope.  It looked very steep to me, but apparently it was a very gentle slope.  The first run down with the instructor was almost my last.  I felt completely unable to control my speed and I was terrified.  The instructor was really good though and got me down the slope in one piece!  I took the magic carpet ride back to the top and prepared to try again.  With all the five year olds hurtling past me, it was more than a little humiliating, but I managed to do the run by myself at the slowest speed ever recorded!  I must admit that I enjoyed myself, even when I had to fall over because I couldn’t stop!  Trying to get back up had me laughing so hard, I couldn’t speak!  Moray has skied before and it appeared that it was all coming back to him.  So much so that he asked the instructor if he could have a go on one of the runs, to which he heard a resounding “NO”.  No worries, we had a great day, with a few hours skiing, followed by a lovely lunch and some mulled wine.

That evening we all ate out at the Hotel Brile – another lovely meal for a reasonable price.

We had originally planned to ski the next day and stay one more night, but the weather forecast looked bad and we weren’t keen to drive back down the mountain if it was snowing.  So after breakfast we packed up our cars and headed back to the marina.

Another first for us, Moray decided to try his hand at making flavoured gin. He bought a couple of bottles of cheap vodka and added sugar and half a kilo of hulled strawberries. The resulting cocktail was dutifully shaken daily for 4 weeks before consumption! After filtering through a coffee filter it proved a great sipping pre-prandial on those cool nights.

On one of the knit and natter afternoons the boys took themselves off to do some beer research and test out various establishments and ended up out till past 10pm. They had a great time and all came home a little worse for wear.

As the marina caters for super yachts, it has some high end restaurants and hotel. The Regent hotel contains a full spa resort so we felt compelled to go for a spa afternoon where I had a foot and lower leg massage and Moray had a neck, back and shoulder massage. After that it was off into the hammam, steam room, sauna, pool and “rain forest” shower for the rest of the afternoon!

For the most part, the winter was spent doing little projects, but the last couple of weeks have seen better weather, so we have been on a couple of hikes, which Moray discovered on an online hiking guide.  The first one was a bit more strenuous than I had anticipated, but enjoyable, nonetheless. 

The second hike Moray undertook alone.  He started at Fort Vrmac and hiked to the highest point between Tivat and Kotor, an old radio tower over looking both sides of the bay and then back by a different path where he met up with a hiking buddy. I will let his photos and videos tell the story of that hike!

The final hike was around Prčanj.  We didn’t find our way all the along the path as it was very overgrown, but it was a good hike all the same, finishing up at a lovely little wine bar we had found back in November.  The same cat came and sat on my lap while I sipped my wine.  Heaven!

After our return from the UK, I joined the marina gym which was a great way to try and get a bit fitter for the upcoming sailing season.  The gym membership gave me access to the tennis courts too, so Moray and I booked one for an hour one sunny day.  Let’s just say Emma Radacanu has nothing to worry about!  The play was terrible but it was so much fun!

With the better weather has come an influx of boats, reminding us that it is time to move on.  We have got the boat prepared and went out for a couple of days last week, to brush up on our skills, check everything works on the boat, and to enjoy being out of a marina for a couple of nights.  We also took the opportunity to scrape the huge amount of algae off the bottom.  The water was absolutely freezing, even with wet suits, hoods and gloves, but Sol Purpose thanked us for it!

We had a farewell party on Wednesday, at the Porto Montenegro Yacht Club “beach”.  It’s not really a beach and it is right next to the police and customs building, but hey!  We ordered food from a local grill, had music playing, and sat in the sun trading stories and plans for what’s next.  It was a great day and evening, and thanks to all in attendance for making this a great place to be for the winter.

In case I haven’t mentioned everyone yet, it was great to meet John & Sharon – Aquarela, Laurie, Alec & Jack- Gratitude, Lou & Ray – Greylag of Hoyle, Sue & John – Lady M, Kim & Steve – Mimpi, Tim & Eileen – Thestral and finally, Miguel – Lucy. Also, thanks to Roddy and his team, Angelko, Filip and Jovana for all their assistance.

Our winter contract ended on Saturday, so we left on Friday to get down to Greece for the start of the month.  We buddy boated with Kim and Steve on Mimpi. Some of the others are heading to Italy, Croatia and Slovenia, some are going to stay in Montenegro, for a little longer but at different places, and some of were headed to Corfu.  The weather looked good, so we headed out around lunchtime for the two day trip to Corfu.  We had a spirited sail the first night in winds in the 20s and beam seas that had us rolling considerably. We ended up sailing for half the trip and motor sailing for the rest which was good for our first offshore trip in over 7 months.

Yesterday we arrived at Ormos Garitsas bay just south of the Old Fortress of Corfu. We anchored and Moray dinghied in to clear in. It took about 4 hours but was relatively painless. He came back to the boat to pick me up and we headed onshore to have a couple of Mythos (local beers), some retsina (local wine) and a nice meal.

The forecast for today is rain all day so this allows us to bring you this installment of the blog 🙂

Trains, Planes and Automobiles…and buses…and taxis…

I ended my last entry with a comment about the need to be flexible – well that was ”famous last words”!

We had originally planned to take to Sol Purpose to Turkey, and fly back to the UK for Christmas from there.  The weather made that impossible, so we changed our flights from Antalya/Luton to Podgorica/Stansted.  We started our journey by cadging a ride from John & Sharon to the Tivat bus station, where we caught a bus to Podgorica.  We were joined on the bus ride by Ben & Lou, an Irish couple, who were also heading home for Christmas.  After a drink at the bus station bar, we all four piled into a taxi for the airport.  The plane was on time and it was a good flight, arriving in Stansted just before midnight.  Here’s where the fun began…

Our original flights had been into Luton, so our flights to Aberdeen were from there.  This meant getting a National Express bus into London Victoria, and then another one out to Luton.  We arrived there at 4:30am. 

Next stop was our PCR tests.  We had had one done on Saturday morning, before leaving Montenegro, but the requirements at the time were not only that test, but another on arrival.  So after standing in a line in a tent for a while, we got that taken care of.  We then had a five minute walk to our hotel, where we were finally able to get some breakfast and take a nap.

Bright and early the next morning, we arrived at the airport, along with thousands of other people.  A combination of our fatigue and the lack of clarity of instructions from the airline meant that by the time we got to the front of the check-in line, our flight had closed and we had missed it.  So, a few hundred pounds later, armed with boarding passes, we got on to a National Express bus to Heathrow Airport, then another to Gatwick Airport, where we finally boarded a flight to Aberdeen!  On arrival at Aberdeen Airport, we received the notifications that our PCR tests were negative.  YAY!!!

Moray’s brother picked us up and took us back to his house where we were to stay for a couple of nights.  We had a great time catching up with Ken and Lorraine over the days we were there, and were looking forward to spending more time with them over Christmas.  While staying with them, we also took the opportunity to go into Aberdeen to get our booster shots taken care of, pick up some lateral flow test kits and, most important, do some Christmas shopping!  We had a good day, looking around Aberdeen and visiting some of Moray’s old haunts.

artfully decorated electrical junction box outside my old university

In particular, we went to The Howff, where not only did we get a good lunch, but we ran into Andy, who has been running a great Saturday Quiz Night online throughout the pandemic.  It was great to finally meet him in person.

The next morning, I wasn’t feeling too great, so I took a test, which came back negative.  I put my symptoms down to fatigue and after-effects of the booster shot.  Later that day, Moray’s cousin Angus met up with us, and after a quick stop in Aberdeen, we headed over to Turriff.  Moray’s Aunty Fiona and Uncle Robert are in the process of moving, but haven’t actually done so yet, so we were going to stay in their “second home”.  We met them there and soon got settled in.

Christmas Eve was a fun day of meeting up with family, culminating in a family dinner, ahead of the big day when another 4 people would be joining us. 

On Christmas morning, as planned, we took lateral flow tests.  And, of course, I tested positive.  Moray and everyone else tested negative, but as we had been together the day before, we all went to the Aberdeen Airport test centre to get tested.  Despite the negative tests in the morning, Moray and his mother tested positive, as well as me.  So after all the effort to get home for a family Christmas, we spent it in isolation!  The Christmas meal was already being prepared so we got ours delivered in takeaway containers through the kitchen window!

Christmas dinner… just the two of us

Not quite what we had planned.  Then began our ten day isolation period.  Mariona figured a way for us to join in family game night via Facebook, which was a lot of fun.  And Fiona and Katie provided several jigsaws, which kept me entertained.  We got groceries delivered by Tesco.  All in all, in wasn’t too bad, although it completely messed up our ability to hang out with friends and family.

The final kick came from Ryanair, who decided to cancel our flight back to Podgorica.  The cost of alternatives was ridiculous, so we had no choice but to delay our return by 12 days, on the next Ryanair flight.

OK, moaning over.  Apart from all this, we had a great time in the UK. 

After we were released from isolation we headed out in the car to Whitehills to strike one of our food cravings off the list, Cullen Skink. The wind was straight out of the North and caused the waves to break over the harbour wall outside the Galley restaurant.

The next day it was time for a roadtrip.  Moray needed to get a follow up following the tests he had done while we were spending time in Scotland in 2020, so we headed across the country to Ayrshire.  We were kindly offered a place to stay by Miles and Sally.  We had met them in the marina in Jersey in 2020, while we were heading south and they were heading north.  We had spoken to them about our wonderful experience in Ardrossan and that is where they have been for a while now.  It is so nice when you get to see people you meet in passing once again.  We had a good evening, followed by a great night’s sleep on board a boat!  The next day was an early start to get to the hospital for 9am.  All went well and we were soon on our way to visit PB & Ingrid and family in their new house in Alford.  The new house is lovely, but crazy as only a house with three dogs, 3 children and a PB can be!  Once again, much reminiscing, catching up and frivolity was had.  We even had a mini Christmas Day, with a gift exchange which was amazing for this, up till that point, disappointed Christmas addict!

 On January 10^th, I left Moray spending a few more days with his family, while I flew down to Bristol to spend time with mine.  Mum and I spent a few days in London, seeing the sights and enjoying Hamilton and the new film version of West Side Story, both of which were fantastic. 

While I was in England, Moray helped his cousin take down a few trees that were a concern as the winds in Scotland were pretty fierce this year and he was worried they might fall and damage the house.

He also visited the new boardwalk at Stonehaven with his mum where a mysterious sculptor had placed several pieces of metalwork for the public to enjoy. Then off to Dunnottar Castle as it was close by.

Meanwhile, in London, Mum headed back to Bristol on the Friday morning, while I stayed in London, and was later joined by Moray.  As we were staying a few more days in the UK, it seemed like an opportunity to see the city together.  On Saturday we did a lot of sightseeing – Westminster, Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park. 

Albert Memorial

Victoria Memorial

Albert Hall

Buckingham Palace

Houses of Parliament

Downing Street

The National COVID Memorial Wall

One of our stops was at the Victoria & Albert Museum.  I had been here a couple of days before with Mum, when we had particularly wanted to see the costume museum.  This time, I wanted to see the Cast Collection.  This was created in the late 1800s, when casts were made of great works of art and buildings so that the British public would be able to experience them without the need to travel.  The detail of the casts is unbelievable.

We then had a ridiculous amounts of DimSum in China Town.

After that, off to a Comedy Club to participate in the recording of an Amazon Special with Spencer Jones.  We didn’t know much about him, so it was a bit of a risk, but we had a great time.  Apart from the fact that he is very talented and funny, seeing how these specials are recorded was a very interesting experience!

Another bonus of the night was that, as the bar was very crowded before the show, we shared a table with two other people.  We really got lucky with our table-mates, Sarah and Carl.  Sarah is an actress who has worked with Spencer, so was able to tell us more about his style of comedy.  Carl works in radio, which was very close to my heart as Radio 4 was a great link to home when we were in the USA.  After the show, we met up with them again for drinks and to share more stories.  All-in-all, a great evening.

On Sunday we had planned to do a treasure hunt experience, which is done with clues via text.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the system to work with our phones, so we did some more sightseeing instead.  We went to the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b Baker Street.  It’s so well done, I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t really Sherlock’s house as he wasn’t a real person!

Another gem that Moray came across was the Wallace Collection.  This was a private collection of art and artefacts collected by the Wallace family, which was gifted to the nation in 1897.  The house itself is amazing, but walking through rooms, just inches away from Rembrandts is breathtaking!  I highly recommend a visit.

We spent the rest of the day doing more touristy sightseeing.

After a great weekend in London, we headed back to Clevedon, to spend a few more days with Mum.  We had a relaxing time, doing jigsaws, cooking, reading and watching great British drama on TV! 

Our final stop was a visit to Moray’s sister and brother-in-law, David, in Berkshire.  We had a lovely couple of days with them, once again catching up and putting the world to rights! 

And then it was time to head back to Montenegro.  We were both nervous after all the issues trying to get to the UK, but our fears were unfounded.  David dropped us at the bus stop right on time, the bus arrived in London on time for our bus to Stansted.  There were no issues checking in and getting through security and the flight was on time.  The flight itself was somewhat bumpy and I did not enjoy landing in the crazy winds, but we were back safe and sound.  John & Sharon were right outside the airport to pick us up and a couple of hours later, we were home!

All-in-all, it was a great trip, despite the initial issues.  But it would have been awful if it weren’t for our wonderful friends and family.  Thanks to Fiona and Robert for lending us their house and car, to Ken & Lorraine, Callum & Mariona, Sally & Miles, PB & Ingrid, Angus & Paulette, David & Jane, Helen & John, Kay, Chris & Bryn for the transportation, accommodation and great conversations, and of course, to our Mums, Muriel & Katie, for everything!

Beautiful Montenegro

After a month in Croatia and a five hour run down its stunningly beautiful coast, we turned into the Bay of Kotor and headed for Porto Montenegro to clear in to the country.  We were amazed by the beauty of the Bay, and were excited for what we would see during our stay.  But first, we headed to the quarantine dock so that Moray could complete all the formalities. Who did we find moored next to us by the customs dock? None other than the Black Pearl, one of the biggest and prettiest sailing yachts in the world.

After clearing in, it was a quick trip into the marina itself, where we would be staying for one night only.  The main reason for staying was to pick up an outboard motor for the dinghy.  Moray called the local marine chandlery and found that they had what we were looking for. We had no car, of course, so he took a taxi to pick it up!

Porto Montenegro is the jewel in the crown for Montenegro’s tourist industry.  The marina is excellent, with great services and amenities.  Megayachts are everywhere, and this probably accounts for the luxury stores all around the area.

The next morning, we headed off to spend some time in the Bay of Kotor.  We headed to a little town called Risan, passed some islands with a monastery and church with mountainous backdrops, and we dropped anchor right in front of the town.

more submarine pens!

Here, as we were to find in most places, we were the only boat so it was very peaceful!  We dropped the dinghy into the water, attached the new motor and Moray took it for a slow ride around the boat to check that everything was running ok.  Once he was happy that we were good to go, we headed in to take a look around the town.

I told Debbie not to drink it…

After a wander it was lunch time.  We chose a little café overlooking the water and ordered cevapi.  These would prove to be the best we have had so far!

After a look around the small town, we took a stroll along the coast road to Perast, which is more of a tourist attraction.  So much so that anchoring is not allowed there.  The town is stunning and well worth a visit.

The next morning, we headed at breakneck speed to Kotor, where we rafted up for an hour or so next to Panda.  We hadn’t seen Darren and Amanda since we left Vlore, so it was nice to have a quick catch up before they headed to Porto Montenegro to clear out and travel on to Slovenia.  We also had a fuel tank full of premixed fuel for a 2 stroke motor which we no longer needed but didn’t want it to go to waste. When they left, we dropped anchor and got the dinghy into the water, so that we could go ashore and explore Kotor. 

Kotor Marina

Kotor is another lovely old walled city, which has managed to preserve its historic buildings.  We took a look around the town centre before heading to make the long climb up to the ancient fortress.

It is a very long, very steep climb – 1,355 steps in total – and in several places, the wall giving some protection against falling off the sheer drop is missing.  Oh joy – yet another terrifying excursion!

After making it to the top, we started the descent but wanted to take a little side tour which Moray had read about.  We couldn’t find the path, but a lady selling water by the path showed us where we had to go.  My every nightmare came true – we had to climb up on to the wall, squeeze through the low window, and climb down a short ladder to the path on the other side.

Yes, the ladder was short, but it was down the vertical side of a fortress!  I have to confess that there were tears, but I made it, and we started the walk towards a cheese shop – yes, Moray put me through this for a cheese shop!  The walk was beautiful, and not as scary as the climb.

looking back at the fortress where we climbed out of the window!

When we reached the cheese shop, it turned out to be someone’s home, nestled in a little dip between the mountains.  These enterprising people have built a little café which was a wonderful spot to stop, enjoy the views and drink a beer.  And yes, we did buy some of their home made goat’s cheese.  It was worth the walk, though climbing back up the ladder to the fortress was not fun.

We had the café all to ourselves and this was our view…

We made our way back down to Kotor seeing more sights on the way.

We When we got back to Kotor, we went to a barbecue restaurant which had been recommended by Darren and Amanda – it was delicious.

We stayed anchored in Kotor for a couple of days, before heading back to Porto Montenegro.  We had ordered new batteries which were available for pickup and would need to be charged using shore power available in the marina.  Also, the winds were forecast to pick up so it would be much safer to be secured to a dock.  We headed back to a different part of the marina this time, next to a group of liveaboards who are spending the winter in the marina.  We hadn’t planned to stay long but the weather would keep us in the marina for 10 days.  We took the opportunity to rent a car and drive out to visit some other parts of the country.  We drove to Ostrog Monastery, which is built into the side of a cliff.  We still haven’t figured out how they managed to build it!  This monastery is visited every year by thousands of pilgrims, some of whom make the climb up to the church barefoot or on their knees!

We also visited Cetinje, which is known as a destination for backpackers.

There is a lot of history here too, but the main sight we wanted to see was the Mausoleum of Peter Petrovich Njegos.  He was a bishop who ruled Montenegro from 1830 to 1851.  When he died, he was laid to rest in a Mausoleum on Mount Lovcen.  As well as being at the top of a mountain, there are 461 steps to climb to the mausoleum.  The views are spectacular and you can see pretty much the whole of Montenegro from this viewpoint.

We drove back to Tivat down a mountain road with lots of hairpin bends (no photo, I’m afraid), but on the way we passed some restaurants with crazy decks out over the mountain.

Eventually, the weather improved enough that we were able to head out and visit some places further south.  We anchored out for 5 nights, with a little dinghy ride into Budva to visit the old town.

Our next marina stop was Bar, down at the south end of the country.  On the way we passed the beautiful little Church of the Holy Sunday.

Originally, we had planned to visit Bar at the end of our stay in Montenegro, but we changed our plans – more of that later.  We got a nice berth, tied alongside rather than med-moored and settled in for a stay of a few days.

One of the attractions of this marina for us was that it had a self-service laundromat, but when we got there, it was locked up.  There was a sign with a phone number to call, which Moray did, only to find that the owners were away in Russia for a few days.  They would be back before we left however, so we made arrangements to get the key on their return. 

Day 2 of our stay in Bar was Moray’s birthday and I had been at a bit of a loss over how to celebrate it.  The final decision was that we would take a train to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, do a little sightseeing and have a nice meal before taking the train back to Bar.

Our transport for the day

The train ride was fun, as it crosses over Lake Skadar but Podgorica is, in our opinion, not worth a visit.  The city was badly damaged in the war, and rather than restore any old buildings, everything was torn down and replaced with office and tower blocks.  It’s such a shame.

remains of one of the bridges blown up in the war

ye olde electronics shoppe 🙂

  There was a wonderful cathedral, which we were amazed by, but very little else to see.

  We stopped for lunch at a “Scottish” pub, which didn’t sell any Scottish drinks or food, but was fun, nonetheless.  We decided not to hang around any longer and took an early train back to Bar.  I was determined that we would still celebrate so we found a little bar that was playing good music, and sat on the comfy sofas, next to a heater, enjoying an adult beverage or two! 

After finally managing to get the laundry done, it was time to start heading back northwards.  We did a series of little day hops, anchoring alone every day, and enjoying the solitude and beauty of this coast.  We went back into the Bay of Kotor and this time, instead of by-passing Our Lady of the Rocks, we tied off for a quick visit and photo shoot.  This is a 15^th century church on an island in the middle of the Bay of Kotor.

After a short stop, we headed on to our chosen anchorage for the night.  We took the dinghy up a little river to an Old Mill which has been converted to a restaurant, where we had a superb meal, with great food and great service.

As we had liked Kotor so much and had to leave early to arrange our battery replacement, we headed back there to see the rest of the town. It turns out that November 21st is Kotor Municipality Day and they were having celebrations inside the old city walls. There was ceremonial wreath laying, handing over of the flag and report and dancing by the Boka Navy.

I think the poor band played the same 20 seconds of music about 30 times 🙂

We walked around outside the old town as well which had great views of the lake.

Our final anchorage in the Bay of Kotor was close to Porto Montenegro, tucked behind a little island.

We took the dinghy to explore another little island church, where we were enthusiastically greeted by two dogs, who proceeded to accompany us on a tour of the island!

But now it was time to head back into Porto Montenegro to take care of a few boat jobs before starting out on the next adventure – Greece and Turkey. Porto Montenegro offers duty free fuel for departing boats hence our decision to leave from Porto Montenegro and not Bar.

Well, that was the plan, but as often happens, our plans changed.  The weather has turned very nasty here, and we have been unable to find a good weather window to get us to Turkey safely, in the foreseeable future.  So we have decided to keep Sol Purpose safely in the marina at Porto Montenegro, and head to Greece next spring. If there is one thing we have learned from cruising, its the need to be flexible!

Croatia

Like Albania, we’ve heard mixed reports about Croatia, and so were in two minds about coming.  On the one hand, there are lots of reports about how expensive it is to sail in Croatia, with anchoring fees being charged in many places, along with reports of fines being charged for breaking non-existent rules.  But on the other hand, the beauty of the country and the amazing waters were a huge draw.  The latter won out, so armed with as much information as we could gather, we made the overnight run to Croatia, bypassing Montenegro on the way.

I had registered our arrival and paid the tourist tax online, before our arrival, and checked the procedure for arrival in Cavtat.  We went straight to the quarantine dock, which was empty, so we didn’t have to worry about stern tie-offs.  Moray went to the Border Police to announce our arrival, and as it was Sunday, when the Harbour Master’s Office is closed, we were all set to stay on that dock until the next morning.  As it happens, the Harbour Master was available, so Moray was able to clear us in and within an hour of our arrival, we had cast off from the dock and were heading to an anchorage.  The first place we tried was no use, as all the shallow enough places were taken, so we headed round to the other side of the town, where we found plenty of room and reasonable holding.  After our experiences in Albania, we are now a little paranoid when it comes to anchoring!

Cavtat is a lovely little town.  It’s now a resort for people living in or visiting Dubrovnik, so there are lots of bars, cafes and gift shops.  However, there is still plenty to see and do.  We walked along the peninsula, past the Grand Hotel, which lives up to its name, and back down to the town.  The water looked so lovely that once we got back to the boat, we went for a swim!

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After a couple of nights at this anchorage, we picked up the anchor and started out on the short journey to Dubrovnik.  The coastline is absolutely stunning.  As we approached Dubrovnik, we could see the famous wall, with little cliff bars set at its base.  We hugged the coast as close as we dared to get the best view.

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Suddenly, there it was – King’s Landing!  Game of Thrones really lucked out when they found Dubrovnik – it was the perfect place to film!

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We continued our journey just past Dubrovnik to Lapad, where we dropped anchor in a lovely bay.

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  it seems all the Balkan countries have pirate ships!

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There is a beach here, and lots of little rocky outcrops where people sunbathe, and just a couple of old piers where it was possible to leave the dinghy.  There were jetskiers and swimmers all around as we came in, but we managed to get anchored after a couple of attempts and were happy with the holding.  As we were sitting in the cockpit, with our usual “anchor down safely” adult beverage, two gentlemen swam over to our boat.  It turns out that they were visiting Dubrovnik while on a pilgrimage to Bosnia, but that they were originally from Houston, TX!  They had seen the name on the boat and came over to ask about our journey! We enjoyed a lovely sunset that evening.

After a calm night, we left the boat the next morning to visit Dubrovnik.  There is a bus, but the weather was lovely, so we made the 45 minute walk into the old city.  The walk took us past some incredible building built into the cliffs.

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  local mechanic using a bath for cleaning engines 🙂

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As we approached the city, we saw more and more signs for “Game of Thrones” walking tours, so we knew how much this show has done for tourism in the city.  Apparently, as well as showing all the sites, many of the local tour guides were extras in the show, so can tell lots of anecdotes to entertain their visitors!  We decided we would forgo that pleasure this time, and just wander around by ourselves.

Our first stop was the Lovrjenac Fortress.  We climbed up to the entrance but just looked around the outside and then back down to the little dock leading to it.

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Next, we continued our walk into the old town.  It is absolutely stunning, with beautiful stone roads and amazing architecture.  There are little side roads leading off from the main squares which were fascinating to explore.

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  sexual equality in full effect!

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  the old customs house

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  a lady trying to catch fish and her intent onlookers 🙂

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  our first ever real grotto

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We mostly just wandered, enjoying the scenery, but there were a couple of interesting stops we made.  One was the Franciscan Church and Monastery, which houses the world’s oldest functioning pharmacy.  It dates from 1317 and is still dispensing today! 

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Another was the incredible Church of Saint Blaise which amongst other artefacts, has the body of the Christian martyr, Saint Silvan.

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After several hours of roaming the amazing city, we sought out one of the clifftop bars we had seen on our way up the coast.  The view was spectacular!

Eventually, it was time to head back to Lapad, picking up some groceries on the way, before taking the dinghy back to Sol Purpose.

Our next stop in Croatia was the island of Mljet, part of which is in the National Park system.  Part of the reason lots of people avoid Croatia is the fact that you have to pay to anchor in most places, at least during high season.  We don’t particularly like paying to anchor either, but this was one place we were happy to make the exception.

The island is stunning, and we had a wonderful anchoring spot all to ourselves.  This was the first time at anchor that we had stern tied to the land, but it all worked out well, and we felt wonderfully secure.

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We had purchased our anchoring permit for two nights online, and when the park ranger showed up at 5:30pm, we were able to show the receipt on our phone – all very easy.

While in Mljet, we rented a scooter so that we could explore the island. We had to walk 5 kilometers to the next town of Pomena to rent one but it still worked out worth it.

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One famous spot is Odysseus’ Cave, where, according to legend, Odysseus was held captive by the nymph, Calypso for seven years.  As long as it’s not too windy, it is possible to get to this cave by boat, or to clamber down a cliff path, and jump in.  We drove to the path, made the clamber down, and then Moray jumped straight in.  He had time to make a video while I convinced myself that I could make the jump!  (Why does everything we want to see involve height and jumping off cliffs???)

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  Odysseus’ Cave from above

After swimming into the cave – yes, it was very cold! – we clambered back up the path to the scooter.  While we were getting ready to set off, we saw a funnel cloud approaching!  A few scary moments there, but it dissipated and never touched down.

We next drove back into the park, and took a ferry ride to visit St Mary’s Monastery.  This Benedictine monastery was built on a little island in the 12^th century and is a beautiful, peaceful place to visit.

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  this is how they do a beer run in Croatia!

After a busy day, we dropped off the scooter, walked back to Polace and went for dinner in a barbecue restaurant overlooking the water.  A lovely end to the day.

It was now time to move on to another of the islands, to drop anchor in a little bay near Loviste.  It offered great protection, the holding was good and it was quiet, with just a couple of other boats there at night.  A few tour boats came out during the day, and dropped anchor long enough for the passengers to try water skiing, swimming etc., but they were gone by sunset.  We spent a couple of days here, swimming and enjoying the beautiful scenery.

Our next stop was to be slightly further along the coast, but when we arrived the anchorage was already full.  With the winds that were expected that night, there weren’t many places to stop, so we made our way to Vlaka, and took a mooring ball.  These are free for patrons of the restaurant there, so we called and made a reservation.  What a great decision all round.  The mooring ball was very secure, so Sol Purpose was safe and the meal was delicious!

Next day we started out towards Split.  The weather took a crazy turn for the worst, and we were motoring in pouring rain and near zero visibility.

Unfortunately, a lot of sailors in this area turn off their AIS so that they can’t be tracked by the Coastguard (another story for another time), which means that no one else can see them either.  We tried using radar, but with all the cloud around, boats just weren’t showing up.  We had a couple of boats suddenly appear from nowhere, which gave us a scare, but eventually the rain cleared up a little and the visibility improved.  We took a look at a couple of anchorages, but for different reasons decided against them.  Then we arrived at Luka Vinisce, where there were a couple of other boats already anchored.  We dropped anchor into sand and held fast.  It was a great little spot, very pretty and protected, and we stayed here a couple of days to ride out the weather.

We now were about halfway through our time in Croatia, so rather than head further north, we turned back and headed for Split.  We anchored in a nice little spot alongside a few other boats and prepared to stay for a few days.

The first day, we dinghied into Split and spent a wonderful day looking around this amazing old city.  Once again, Game of Thrones was evident everywhere.  There is even a Game of Thrones Museum, where you can sit on the Iron Throne!  We bought a pass to all the museums and sights and set out on a busy but enjoyable day.

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  but what have the Croatians ever done for us?

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We visited St. Martin’s church, the smallest church in Split.

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We also went to the St Dominius Cathedral, museum, bell tower and crypt inside the Diocletian’s Palace

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  original flooring uncovered beneath the current floor

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  more original flooring under the organ

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That night, the wind really picked up.  Moray put a second snubber line on the anchor, to be doubly sure of everything holding.  Unfortunately, knowing our dinghy’s propensity for taking off on her own, you would have thought we would have brought her on to the deck, but we didn’t.  Rookie mistake 😛

At about 2:30am, Moray went out to check that the anchor was holding and realised that the dinghy was gone.  Obviously there wasn’t anything we could do at that point, but as soon as it was daylight, Moray started searching with the binoculars and spotted the dinghy, up against the boulder mole of the harbour wall.  A very kind man from the next boat over took him over and they retrieved the dinghy.  The outboard motor was gone however.  The dinghy looked to be in good shape as it was towed back to our boat, but when Moray got into it, water started to pour in.  We pulled the dinghy up on the deck and found out how bad the damage was.  Moray thought he might be able to fix it, so we called the marina and asked if they had a slip available we could use.  It was the weekend, so we had to wait a couple of days for the charter boats to come and go, and then we were able to go to a slip for a few days.  Once safely tied off there, we rented a car.  Our first stop was the harbour where the dinghy had ended up on her bid for freedom.  We searched along the wall, and would you believe it, we found the outboard, sitting in about three feet of water, nestled in a rock crevice!  We hauled it out and took it back to Sol Purpose where Moray started working on repairing the dinghy and outboard.  The damage done to the dinghy from being battered against the boulder wall for over 5 hours was extensive.

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  taped off and ready for patching

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  damage to the tube to hull join

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  first long patch installed

Once all the repair work was done, and we were waiting for glue to dry etc. we took a trip out to Klis Fortress – yes, yet another Game of Thrones site.  This was probably my favourite of all the sites and was well worth the drive. 

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  you’re nicked me old china!

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  I had heard of a double handed sword but never this

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From there, we went to Trogir, another great little city, as you can see from the photos.

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Back at Sol Purpose, it was time to test the dinghy and outboard.  We put both back in the water and realised very quickly, that despite his best efforts, the dinghy was still leaking and the outboard, although it would run, would not tick over and had very little power. Moray suspected that the electrical system had salt water intrusion.  I guess there are only so many times you can let your outboard spend time underwater – especially if one of those times it’s underwater for 5 days!

So now came the rush to find a replacement.  Moray drove into Split and found a dealer that had a dinghy available in stock.  The dealer kindly agreed to deliver it to the marina the next morning, which he did, just in time for us to head off, as the slip was needed for the charter boats. The replacement outboard engine would have to wait till we got to Montenegro.

We now had only four days left of our cruising permit, so we did day hops back to Cavtat.  Once we were back there, we put the dinghy into the water and paddled in to the harbour, to go for a farewell to Croatia meal.

The next morning, we went round to the Customs dock, and tied off for Moray to go ashore and clear us out of the country.  It was quick and painless and by 9:30am, we waved goodbye to Croatia and headed to our next adventure in Montenegro.

Um, honey, where’s the boat?

After 10 relaxing days in Sarandë, it was time to move on.  We headed over to a dock, where we refilled from a fuel truck, then checked out of the port and headed northwards.  We happened to leave at the same time as the pirate boats, so it was as if we were being escorted out of the town!

We hugged the coast, so that we could see the Albanian Riviera, which was stunning. 

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After a few hours of motoring, we arrived at our next destination, Porto Palermo.  This is an anchorage in a little bay, in front of a submarine pen.  So long as you stay outside a certain area, it is fine to anchor there.

When we arrived there was one other boat there, so we dropped anchor just behind them, close to the beach.  I went for a swim, while Moray snorkelled around the rocky shore.  Just before sunset, the other boat left so we had a beautiful anchorage all to ourselves – wonderful!

The next morning, we took the dinghy over to a small harbour at the far end of the bay.  We went ashore and visited the Ali Pasha Castle. 

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Then we went to the local tavern for lunch after which we strolled the local dock to see a nice classic boat.

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When we got back to Sol Purpose, Robert and Sharon had arrived and were anchored nearby.  We arranged to go to their boat for dinner and cards.  The afternoon was spent on boat jobs for Moray, and making potato salad for me.  We then headed over to dinner.  We had a lovely evening, but as it progressed, the weather started to get a little rough.  The winds picked up and it started to rain.  Moray kept popping out to check on Sol Purpose, but around 11pm we decided it was time to leave.  As we were so close we had decided to row over, but luckily, we had left the engine set up, as it was pretty rough.  I stepped out into the cockpit to get into the dinghy, looked around – Sol Purpose was gone!  I shouted this fact to Moray so we all started looking around frantically.  We spotted her anchor light – about 400m from where we had left her.  The anchor had dragged in the strong winds and she was headed towards the shallows in the far end of the bay!  We jumped into the dinghy and raced over to her.  It seems that she had reached some shallow water – not shallow enough to hit the bottom, but just enough for the anchor to catch again.  We managed to get aboard, tie off the dinghy, get her started and headed back to the anchorage.  It was pitch black, and blowing like crazy, but we got her safely anchored again.  Once that was done, we were too hyped up to sleep, so we poured ourselves a drink and sat down to watch Emma Raducanu win the US Open!

The next morning, we left Porto Palermo to continue our journey northwards.  We had a good day on the water, and arrived in good time at Vlorë.  We dropped anchor in the harbour and settled in for a few days stay.  Our first full day was spent sightseeing around Vlorë.  We first visited a mosque, which had somehow survived the communist regime’s purge of religious buildings.

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Then we went to Flag Square.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of work being done on the memorial and square, but we still managed to get some pictures.

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Next we walked up through the war cemetery, towards the tomb of Kuzum Baba, a Bektashi spiritual leader.

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  lighting remembrance candles

Apart from the Bektashi center, the views of the city are spectacular.

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As we walked back down to the town, we stopped at a bakery and bought byrek for lunch.  Byrek are filo pastry filled with cheese or spinach and are absolutely delicious.

Later that evening, Darren and Amanda arrived on Panda.  They dropped anchor right as a beautiful sunset appeared!

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Our next day, we had arranged to pick up a rental car, so that we could explore the surrounding countryside.  Unfortunately, the rental fell through, so we changed plans.  We invited Darren and Amanda over for drinks and swapped travel stories.

Next day, following advice picked up the night before, we headed over to Sazan for a day trip.  This is an island a couple of hours away from Vlorë, which used to be a top secret military installation.  After the fall of communism, it was no longer needed and in 2015, it was opened up to the public, as a nature reserve.  It’s not possible to stay on the island after dark, but there is a lovely little harbour available for day use.  (There are a couple of anchorages for an overnight stay, but they aren’t very sheltered).  When we arrived, there was a coastguard boat nearby, but they weren’t interested in us.  We tied off to the harbour wall, and set off to explore the island.  There are tunnels and bunkers everywhere here, some of which you can get into.  About 1,000 soldiers, together with 300 families, lived on this island, so there are lots of buildings – a school, a hospital, military buildings and homes.

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  coasties coming in for a look

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  this island still has a military presence

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  the same style of range marks we saw in bunkers on Jersey

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  island school

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  Debs on guard 🙂

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  view from military housing… not bad!

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  the highest point of our hike

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  power plant in the bunkers

We spent a few hours exploring this interesting island, when suddenly the peace was shattered by a pirate boat with over 100 friends on board, singing and dancing!  The captain came past in full pirate garb and we asked how many passengers he had. He replied that he had no passengers, only hostages! 😂🤣 They were having a great time!

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Eventually we had to leave and head back to Vlorë, and anchored right back in the harbour.

The next day, we needed to get some chores done, to prepare for leaving.  We got our grocery shopping done and we were ready.   We decided to have dinner out for our last night and went to a restaurant which served grilled meat – lots of grilled meat!  We bought the mixed plate for two people and struggled to finish!  Goat, chicken, sausages and lamb – delicious!

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We had planned to leave on Friday but we had been having engine starting issues, so Darren and Moray spent the morning working on the problem.  I decided to find a laundromat and found Speed Queen on google maps.  What a fantastic laundromat and very reasonably priced.

Saturday, we pulled up the anchor and headed to Durrës.  This is the biggest port in Albania and has no anchorage so we would need to go into the “marina”.  We had contacted an agent in advance, so as we approached the port, Ilir was waiting for us.  Until this year, private boats had to tie off alongside the commercial boats, including the very frequent ferries, which meant they had to move all the time.  This year, part of the port has been set aside for private vessels and while it is basic, it has water and electricity and is safe, as it is inside the port authority gates.  Rumour has it that investors are going to be building a new marina and resort on the site, and moving the commercial port, but let’s watch this space.

We spent a day looking around Durrës.  First, the Roman amphitheatre was very interesting.

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Also, the architecture of the town is a mixture of old, new and half-built!

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  had a Hollywood Blvd vibe

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We rented a car for three days, so that we could explore the northern part of Albania.  Our first day, we drove through amazing villages and countryside, until we reached Berat, the city of two thousand windows. 

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After lunch, we got back in the car and took a little detour to Osum Canyon.

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Then it was on to Tiranë, the capital of Albania.  We had a bit of a problem finding our hotel using google maps.  Since google maps set everything up, some of the roads have been blocked off and some are roads in the loosest sense.  We parked the car and walked to the hotel in the end!  Moray had done a great job of researching hotels and found us a wonderful place to stay – the Marion Hotel.  We got checked in, a quick shower and then out to dinner.  We had made reservations at Mullixhiu, a highly recommended restaurant on may travel sites.  Thank goodness for the reservations – so many people were turned away that evening!  The food is excellent and the service even better. They mill their own flour on three old mill wheels that were given to them.

The next day was dedicated to exploring Tiranë.  First let me say, if you ever go to Tiranë, use public transport – driving is impossible!  As I already mentioned, google maps is horribly out of date.  Worse though, is the insanity of the driving – people just pull out whenever they want, cut across lanes etc. – horrible.

We started our day with a wonderful breakfast at the hotel, followed by a terrifying drive to Skanderbeg Square, with another mosque that escaped the communist regime.  Then we went to the Old Bazaar, which has lots of cafes, shops and bars.  Next, onto Blloku, which in communist times was where the members of the politburo had their apartments.  When the regime fell, the people took over the apartments and turned the area into a colourful, vibrant centre with cafes, bars, restaurants and shops.  This area is also the home of the Sky Tower, which has a revolving observation deck.  We had hoped to visit, but like a lot of buildings in Albania, it was under repair.

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After a quick lunch of byrek, we got in the car and headed to the northeast of the town.  We took the cable car up to the top of Mount Datji.  I must admit, I hadn’t realised it would be quite such a long ride, or so high, and I was terrified, but all was good and there were amazing views of the city and surrounding area.

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  Debs forcing a smile 🙂

Once back down safely, we walked just down the hill to Bunk’Art, a really fascinating exhibit.  It is in one of the bunkers built by the communist regime, and has been set up to show what the bunkers were like to live and work in, as well as to explain the history of Albania and show some contemporary art.  It was an amazing exhibit and we just wish we had a little more time to do it full justice.

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We headed back to the hotel to relax for an hour or so, before heading out for dinner.  This time, we went to the Blloku district and ate at Ejona.  It was another delicious meal, followed by a little barhopping before heading back to the hotel.

The next morning, after another great breakfast, and a chat with the hotel owner, we set off northwards for the last part of our tour.  First we headed to Sarisalltik, in the Krujë district.  Once again, I would never have agreed if I had known what we were in for!  This is another Bektashi pilgrimage site, with amazing views at the top of a mountain – well of course the views are amazing – it’s 1176m high – straight up the side of a mountain!

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After that, we drove to Lezha, where we visited the fortress.

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Then onto Shkodra, where we stopped at the side of the lake for a seafood lunch.  We were almost at the border with Montenegro, so we felt like we had really managed to visit Albania from top to toe!

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  dumpster cows… who knew they even existed!!!

Then it was time to head back to Tiranë, do some grocery shopping and start preparing for our departure.

Our final two days in Durrës were spent cleaning the boat, laundry – another great laundromat! – and final shopping.  We just have to get our final byrek lunch before clearing out and making an overnight passage to Croatia. 

We have had a wonderful time in Albania.  We had heard such mixed reviews, but we are both so glad that we came.  We had originally planned to be here for two weeks, but it turned into four.  I would recommend anyone to come for a visit, before it becomes just another expensive Mediterranean resort.