After getting up and grabbing some pastries at a bakery within the old town, we went to the Porsche and began our drive south. After about 30 mins or so, we arrived in Budva, another coastal town with an old walled city. This one, however, was somehow even more popular with the tourists. We managed to snag one of the last parking spots. A Mercedes was on my left and the driver motioned with his hands that there wasn't a lot of space for the Porsche, but I know the car well and it is quite easy to fit in small spaces.
We walked around the beach area briefly and then down a walking path along the coast. We found a statue called, "The Dancing Girl," which I expertly emulated in this picture. It seems to be a fairly wealthy area. We saw lots of very large yachts, one evidently from Delaware according to the writing on its stern. After a stroll around the town for a bit, we agreed that Kotor was the better place to spend the night, even if there were a couple of cruise ships parked there. From Budva, we journeyed on to the Albanian border. The border guard smiled at me and said something that I could not understand. We will assume it was friendly and positive.
We stopped off at a fortress just outside the city of Shkoder. We walked up to the gate, but they were charging 200 Lek to get in. We as of yet had not been able to get Albanian currency, so that's as far as we got. From the fortress, it was a short drive to the hotel in the city center. There has been much written about the Albanian driving experience including the lane divider being rocks instead of a dashed painted line. Others remarked that Albanians were the worst drivers they'd ever seen. Is any of this true? Meh. Not really. The road was fine and the drivers were no worse or better than what we'd experienced in Croatia or Montenegro.
After settling in to the Hotel Tradita, we walked to find an ATM. I asked at a hotel lobby where I might find such a machine. Bear in mind, this was a fancier looking hotel than ours, had an American flag displayed at the front entrance, yet the desk clerk looked at me like, "ATM" was the most foreign sounding thing she'd ever heard. I thought ATM was a universal name, but apparently not in Albania. I walked literally around the corner and found an ATM on my own. Then we walked down a pedestrian street called Rruga Kole Indromeno. It extends about half a mile from the main mosque.
On the street were about 10 more ATMs in case I needed one. It's like Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade, but in Albania. It was pretty warm in the sun, so I ordered a beer at a small café. It was .5 liters for roughly the equivalent of $1. Things are pretty cheap in Albania. We later went into a store where we bought a magnet, an Albanian soccer jersey, a hand-knit bag, and a soccer ball for roughly $15 total. As we made our way back and had dinner at the hotel's restaurant, I ordered 4 shish kebabs and some potatoes, while Nicole had pasta and fries. We also had some bread and cheese along with two glasses of wine and this also totaled up to be about $15. Not bad. As the sun began to set, it actually got quite cold. The climate is very similar to Los Angeles. Warm in the sun, but brisk in the shade. After a hearty meal, we went back to our room to relax and prepare for our longest day of driving tomorrow. We will have multiple border crossings to get to Bosnia, so we are going to try and get an early start.
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