Yesterday I said goodbye to Kotor, Montenegro. I just had enough of the sun going down over the mountains, the beautiful beach in front of the hostel, pub crawls, and skinny dipping with 20 year olds (NOT-I am still questioning why I didn't stay an extra day).
Truth be told, Kotar was a cruise ship port(from my window yesterday morning, I could hear the cruise director's voice making announcements on the Costa Mediterranea docked across the bay)-which is some ways I miss-but I didn't feel much in the way of culture as in bigger cities I have visited, so I felt it was time to move on.
So at 8:30 am, I met in front of another hostel for a van ride to Tirana, Albania-a 5 hour trek. In actuality, it wasn't too bad a ride. Including the driver, there we're 7 of us in a 9 passenger van. so we could spread out. 2 of those we're two girls from the Montenegro tour the other day. I was going to ask for their names so I could tag them in the group pic which was taken, but they weren't very friendly, so I forgot about it.
Anyway, in the afternoon I reached Tirana. The van driver said he would drop me off in the middle of town, but for one euro he would take me to the hostel. I don't like to waste money, but I paid the euro, and it was one euro well spent-the streets are confusing in Tirana.
After checking in, I wandered around downtown for a while-I bought a bag of nuts at the Carrefour market-there is a market selling different fruits and vegetables. so I bought a huge bag of dates (or something like that), and had some olives for lunch (and felt bad I didn't buy the nuts at the market too, instead of at a large retailer).
I wandered around the city-the city has medium rise buildings, and is somewhat nondescript. I then went back to the hostel for a nap on on of the hammocks in the leafy yard.
After the nap, around 6 or 7, I walked back around the town. I found there we're big tv's set up in bars outside everywhere-I wanted to know what was going on. I tried to get into a bar to find out what was going on-but the bartender was rude. I called him a 4 letter word-I later found out it was the Albania-Portugal qualifying football match for some European championship.
After wandering, I went back to the hostel about 10 pm, and went to bed.
