We are not terribly organized, so it was not until about 11 or 11:30am today that we figured out which bus we were going on & which city in the north of Albania would be our destination. Because of logistics, we chose Shkoder/Shkodra. The drive here in the mini-bus was relatively uneventful, and the road was straight and flat.
The first thing we did was to find a hotel, to reduce the uncertainty. We looked at an old hotel - formerly the communist hotel, I think. When we first went in the doors, it looked like it was empty and under construction. But I looked around the corner & saw a reception desk tucked in the corner. The receptionist explained that there are 2 prices, depending on which floor we choose. $30 for up to the 3rd floor and $20 for the 4th or 5th floor. Apparently the lower floors have already been renovated, but the top floors haven't. I asked for the keys to one of each, so I could see what I was choosing between, which seemed surprising to her, but she agreed.
We took the tiny elevator (the 4 of us barely fit in it) up to the 3rd floor. The walls in the hallway were a yucky pink (my mother knows how I feel about hot pink walls), and paint was cracking. It was very industrial looking. The room itself had huge sections of paint that had fallen off the wall, and looked kind of crappy, but it was do-able. It had 2 single beds (it was either that or 1 double bed). I then wanted to look at the 4th floor, which Genci thought was silly, since the 3rd floor was so dismal. But he humored me. The 4th floor wasn't bad. The hallway looked more cheery (lime green & a plant). When I opened the door to the room, the quick glance I got of it was that it was the same or slightly better than the 3rd floor, but since I saw that the room had clothing and opened suitcases in it (inhabited!!!), I quickly shut the door. I was tempted to go in again to check out the bathroom, wondering if that was the reason the 3rd floor was better, but I couldn't go in with people's stuff in there.
We took the stairs down to go out, but when we got to the ground floor, the door from the stairwell to the main part of the hotel was padlocked shut. There was no way out besides using the elevator. My first thought was what if there's a fire! Genci said you can't have a fire in a totally concrete building. But my next thought was that there is always the threat of the power going out. That is a common problem here. And then what? You're locked in the building until it comes back on? So strange!! Why would you padlock shut the door from the stairwell?
Anyways, we didn't stay there. We are staying at a small hotel next door which has a lot more atmosphere, even if the room is small. Hey, at least we can walk around in our underwear if we want tonight, since we won't be sharing our room with strangers like we do at the hostel. Whoopee!
I've been given the 5 minute warning from Genci.
Quickly:
We walked around a nice little pedestrian - walkway, touristy restaurant area, the kids played briefly in the park, then we had a delicious meal at a restaurant. We went to the park again (I took pictures of some guys playing dominoes - there were many bunches of them throughout the park) and the kids played. That ended when Luke fell & scraped his knee. A teenager in the park was trying to get him to be a man about it, but he just wanted to cry & be held. When he recovered, we took a walk down a street with older houses.
Nathan is dying to rent a bicycle. There are tons of people on bicycles here. It's not like China or anything, but it IS noticeable. The town is a lot quieter than Tirana, even though it is the main city in the North. It seems to be a pleasant place so far.
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