Game of Thrones

Went to the old town of Dubrovnik today. Its a little bit surreal, you do feel like you're on a movie set.

Of course we had to find the "walk of shame" steps😀

Plenty of recent history in evidence, from the 1990's war between Croatia, Montengro and the Yugoslav National Army. Dubrovnik was under siege until 1995.

No decent options for a campsite, the only one being a car park / coach park for 27€. So we booked a hotel for a couple of nights. Pretty reasonable at 43€ per night.

Food

In case you haven’t noticed we’re foodies, so here’s my thoughts on the recent countries. In reverse order:
We’re now in Dubrovnik. We’ve just been to the number 2 restaurant in Dubrovnik, according to TripAdvisor. I’m not a big fan of tripadvisor, you have to be so careful in your interpretation of the ratings and feedback.
But anyway we went with it. Food, pretty average. Compared to Albania or home I’ll give it a 5 out of 10. Of course it cost an arm and a leg.
But what really messed up the evening was having to sit within 10 metres of 3 English-speaking women (not from the UK btw,  I’ll leave you to figure out where they were from). I really didn’t need to know about HRT or masturbation or that one of them had only had 12000 calories today. I assume she was on a diet.
Marie did threaten to leave when I asked in possibly a too loud voice if they were deaf or just dumb😀 do they really have to shout about everything?! Interspersed with shrieking.

Albania.
You’ve seen the photos. I’m going to give this the benchmark of 10 out of 10. Not saying it’s the best we’ve ever had. Just using it as a benchmark. It’s not that it was cheap, it was genuinely good. But it’s a very restricted sample. 1 restaurant.

Macedonia.
Stupidity good value. It’s  a 7.
Best place was the bar / restaurant attached to the campsite. We only wanted a snack but ended up with a sort of Pizza / pie the size of the Sprinter wheels.
Best bit, however, was when I asked about the carp on the menu. The owner goes over to a bunch of locals on the next table and takes some of their carp. I’ve never tasted this before, it’s so good. I buy them a round, cheers all round😀
So they then send over more fish, balushka I think,  again really good. A great night!

Peloponnese.
Really good, fresh and great value. I’ll  give it an 8. Probably better than most area's we've tried in Greece. Apart from 1 restaurant on Corfu (Agni, near Nisakki) but that was seriously expensive.

Our Cooking.
Loads of fresh produce, meat in Greece weirdly difficult to find though. When we did (it’s almost like buying alcohol in certain countries, how come when their diet I’d so meat biased?!) it’s so good and cheap. Anyway when we cook its a 10 of course.

Three Countries in a Day, By Accident

Our campsite in Northern Albania is great, well to be more precise the restaurant is. We like our food, that’s why you don’t see too many photos of us on here😀
We don’t normally eat out twice a day, but it was so good we had to go back in the evening .

The people here are very friendly and the owner of the campsite is really trying to make it work. They’ve owned the restaurant for 15 year’s but only opened the campsite just over a year ago. They will help you with places to go, suggesting days out, road trips etc. She speaks really good English.

Before we left I took a walk up to the castle, so soon as I told the guy taking your money (1.50 euro) that I was Welsh I was his new best friend. Football I guess, I wasn’t about to tell him that I seriously dislike football of course😀

By the way you can use Euros everywhere, they don’t rip you off on the exchange rate.

North to the Montenegro border. The main industry here seems to be car washing. Every town or village has them every 100m or so. At first I thought that the hosepipes squinting water in the air were there to keep the dust down, but no it’s their way of advertising.

Crossing into Montenegro took forever at the Albanian side, no problem though. Montenegro quicker and easier, they are very keen on car insurance though. Quite rightly so.

Montenegro.
It’s  weird, literally 1km in and it’s obviously a completely different country. It feels an easy place. Roads, OK, the first 30km or so you could be on back roads in mid Wales . High hedges, sheep and freezone cows.
The coastline is beautiful, maybe we’ve been starved of the sea for too long, its been maybe 5 days😀
Oh and if you like 1980 / 90s VW Golf's  (I do) this must have the highest density of Mk1 and Mk2 Golf's of any country I know of. Plenty in really good condition too.

Kotor.
OK it’s definitely a tourist trap, see the cruise ship. The place was packed with Americans and Canadians. But so what if it’s a tourist trap, it’s  beautiful. A bit like Cinques Terres in Italy but more appealing, less packed and far more friendly.

We were feeling quite smug with ourselves that we had parked up so easily, within metres of the old town. In a standard car slot, less is more sometimes. That’s until we had to pay. 90 cents per hour so 3€, um no. He wants 9€ for a large car. No receipt, no point arguing.

Jump on a roro ferry, I always like ferries. They seem to add a sense of adventure to any journey. This one is only 9€.
I’d found an open all year campsite, except it isn’t. Lucky really their drone photos conveniently left out the ship yard next door.
So free camping. Um, it’s  the first bit other coast that’s  really cramped and built-up. So we take a side road that seems to follow the coast and end up at. The Croatian border. Ah well not quite the plan but we carryon. Montenegro border take their time, want to see car insurance even though we’re leaving but eventually wave us on.
Croatian border control. Strange, he’s happy to see us, doesn’t grunt and waves us through in minutes😀
So that’s why its 3 countries by accident.
We’ve eventually find a great spot, it’s  early though as it goes dark at 6pm so snacks and movie time. We’ve not got the usual satellite TV you see on most MH of a certain nationality. We do have a 1Tb hard drive with maybe 500 movies and TV series on though. We’ve maybe

watched 10 or so so plenty left.

Back to Albania

The crossing back into Albania was a doddle, way easier and quicker than getting into Macedonia, go figure.
I was slightly concerned as a German couple parked next to us at Camping Rino had had a load of grief. Camper searched and he thought they were after money. No problem for us though, again go figure!

Albania is a weird place.
Some good, some complete shit holes. Take a look at some of the photos, maybe we took a wrong turn and ended up in Chenobyl😀 and the railway bridge photo is there because they looked so, well communist😀
Some places just like Africa.

We drove through the centre of Tirana, that was interesting but they weren't complete twnts like Naples.

Unfortunately some towns you drive through make you feel a little uncomfortable.

But.
Arrived at our campsite which was open but no one around so we went to the restaurant.
Wow, I'm not kidding it's like fine dining at home but 6Euro for a main meal :-) we're happy, for now!

We're here:

http://www.campinglegjenda.com/index.php

The owners are so welcoming and helpful. Thankfully they both speak perfect English.

Macedonia

Well Macedonia has turned out to be a bit of a let down. We went to the UNESCO world heritage site town. It was, well, grey. Weirdly bland, soulless and I suppose what you would expect a stereo typical Soviet union era place to be like. Thank god the sun was shining :-)
It's difficult to describe, 1970s shops, Casino's and lots of dog shit! :-)

Ah well, the campsite is great. And thats why I feel bad not being more positive about it. The owner of Camping Rino is a fantastic host, his place is just great and in fact everyone we've met have been so friendly. Take a look at the photos of the campsite.

Sorry, childish I know but it appealed to me. I think it means "FOR SALE"

Moving on first thing in the morning.

1st Night in Macedonia

OK I can tick carp off my list. I asked the owner of the campsite about it. He went over to one of the locals table, nicked some of theirs and gave it to me! :-)
Very tasty, but boney.
Apparently they send the trout from here to queen Elizabeth. It takes 7 years to grow to 1kg.
I'll try it tomorrow.

Oh and they then donated some baluska. Again really tasty.



So we've drunk and stuffed our faces all night.
Bought a round for the locals who donated their carp and belushka. The bill? 29Euro :-)

Macedonia

Made it to Macedonia for lunch. Not bad going considering a good portion was off road :-)
Someone said the roads were bad in Albania but jeez. Maybe tomtom leading us astray  :-) the locals gave us some weird looks for sure!

I'm using a Samsung tabS2 with navigator and osmand for navigation. They've been
OK Navigator has Tomtom maps and this was the app that sent us off pieste. It was a bit uncomfortable even in the Sprinter.

Maybe I'll splash out on a new Garmin sat nav for normal road use.

I was a little concerned when the road basically disappeared 60km from our destination!

Stopped by Albanian police 3 times, first was because I hadn't put my headlights on, after a bit of confusion he just reached through the door and turned them on for me. Doh! Anyway he didn't do the "let's earn a few euro of the dumb tourists" So happy days😀

Downside is that it's cost us 100euro for insurance in Albania and Macedonia, our green card doesn't cover us here.

Upside.

Beer less than a Euro.

Local wine tastes like 30quid a bottle quality at home (not that I'd know really). We even Google the winery as we thought a trip there would be fun. It's 3hrs North East of us though so maybe not.

Steak and chips less than 4quid.

Oh and we're next to yet another UNESCO world heritage site, they're as common as muck :-)
Ohrid. We're off there tomorrow.

Staying at Camping Rino, just wonderful. Free coffee and raki as soon as we arrived. Beautiful setting.
https://campingrino.com/

A few photos of the trip here, rubbish quality as the camera was on some weird setting.