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Sunday, May 9, 2021

Views above Korca

Saturday was forecast to be a blue skies and sunshine kind of day... exactly what we were looking for to do the walk up to the cross and chapel on top of a nearby hill overlooking Korca.

There is no hiking trail, but the road goes up to a big resort hotel, almost all the way to the cross and chapel so we could have easily driven up. But, we're not normal and needed some exercise. It turned out to be steeper than it looked!

We climbed 460 meters (1,500 feet) in 5 kms (3 miles). 

We are headed up to that cross and chapel at the top right.
You can see our road that cuts across the hill.

Views looking north.

Starting to get a good view of the city of Korca.


We are headed up there.

Korca, Albania.

We made it up to the resort.

View looking south.

Looks like a waterfall over there.

Zoomed in.

Chapel at the top.


Nice views on a beautiful day.

The cross is huge!
Can you see Ruth standing at the bottom?

We took a bit of a different route on the way down because we were headed to the Korca Brewery. This route took us through some fields and eventually beside that factory ruins...


No idea what they did here, but there's not much left of it.

Made it to the Korca Brewery.

We sat outside at the beer gardens restaurant.

It was a really nice atmosphere. There was live music playing, and the place is popular with lots of locals because it's so inexpensive. We shared a plate of fries, a pork kebab and a mixed salad. And I had two big glasses of draft beer, and Ruth had a decent size glass of wine. Total bill including tip was 1,000 lek ($11.95 CAD, $9.85 USD).

The food was not great, but as I said the atmosphere was fun and the drinks were cheap. We wouldn't go back for the food, but we would go back to sit and have a drink. The 0.4 liter glass of beer was 70 lek ($0.84 CAD, $0.69 USD), and Ruth's glass of wine was 150 lek ($1.80 CAD, $1.50 USD).

Yes, I do like my beer!

Ruth and her wine.

We had originally planned on doing the brewery tour, but by the time we were ready to go Ruth asked "Do you still feel like doing the tour?". And I really didn't. After all, one of the reasons to do the tour is for the free beer, and with the prices of the beer in the beer garden, I felt like I already got my money's worth! So we skipped the tour. We have done lots of brewery tours in the past.

We ended up doing about 12 kms (7.5 miles).

We had a bit of a different evening. One of my group of guy friends in Ottawa set up a zoom meeting trivia game for us and our spouses. And of course Canada is all pretty much under lockdown right now so it was a fun distraction for them. We had participants from Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, and of course Albania! They did it at 3pm eastern which was 1pm for the Calgary friends, and 9pm for us. We had a lot of fun. But the trivia was all about television, movies, and songs so we didn't do so well. Out of a possible 86 points, we got 26! The winners got 71 points. I guess we don't watch enough television.

Now, had they asked some world geography questions we might have done better!

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Decent deal on this Countertop Ice Maker Machine.

And in Canada...


16 comments:

  1. Curious, had you checked what a one night stay at the resort would cost?

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    1. No, we hadn't but because you asked we did and the cheapest price that we could see for one night was $165 CAD ($135 USD) and that was through Booking.com, breakfast is also included.

      Delete
  2. Sounds like a fun evening! I.m not very good at trivia questions but do get occasional ones on Jeopardy even some that the contestants don't know!

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    1. It was a fun evening! We obviously aren't good at trivia questions either, at least ones having to do with music, TV and movies, lol!

      I think we also can answer a few of the questions on Jeopardy but normally they are the ones that have nothing to do with the three categories above. :-)

      Delete
  3. Can't believe there was no question about Albanian bunkers....

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    1. I know right! I guess they didn't want to give us an advantage in the game, lol!

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  4. What an incredibly beautiful country!

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    1. It really is and we keep saying that we still haven't got to the best part of Albania yet. Now that the weather is much nicer we will be heading north to the Albanian Alps very soon. :-)

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  5. They should have thrown in some travel questions...I don't watch a lot of TV but I do watch movies and documentaries.

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    1. We agree, they should have had some travel questions! :-)

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  6. Beautiful Scenery up to the cross. Great exercise.
    Reasonable price for your snack.
    Haven't played Trivia in years.
    Be Safe and Enjoy!

    It's about time.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. It certainly was and maybe another day we will drive up there and then hike into the mountains behind the cross, it looked really nice back there.

      We haven't played trivia in years either and it obviously show. lol! :-P

      Delete
  7. We never took you to the brewery in Monterrey. They have a biergarten and they give you two free beers! Next time!

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    1. We would enjoy that Chris, or I should say that Kevin would really enjoy that.

      Several times we have talked about going to the brewery in Zacatecas, we were even going to take the caravan group one time but for some reason or another we just haven't made it there yet.

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  8. Awesome hike and views! And great prices on the birra. I wouldn't have done well on the trivia either. I keep meaning to ask, is there much English spoke in Albania? Thanks!

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    1. The views were great from up there and we enjoyed the hike up too.

      It is hard to go wrong with prices like that for both the beer and the wine. :-)

      If you stayed in Tirana or along the coast in some of the seaside towns then yes, you would come across more English but in many of these smaller places that we have been, there is not a lot of English spoken. Many of the younger people can speak English though.

      Delete

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