Change of plans! We decided to stay put for one more night. It turns out that the castle we were hoping to visit now charges a €10 fee to overnight there, and it's not that important to us. So the only other option in that area was beach camping at a restaurant. We decided that if we are going to beach camp, we've got it pretty good right where we are!
And with some rain in the forecast, we didn't want to be stuck (literally!) in soft sand or on a muddy road.
Wednesday turned out better than forecast. It was a really nice morning, so I got the bicycles off and we went for a leisurely 10 km (6 mile) bike ride.
Along the way, we stopped in at the Conad grocery store and explained about the charge on our Visa card. If you missed it yesterday, we had bought some stuff and when processing the Visa transaction, their terminal had said "Disconnected" and the charge didn't go through so I had paid in cash. But when I checked later, the charge was showing as "Pending" on our account.
The manager was really nice, and he called his wife who looks after that stuff. She was to call the bank and check it out. While we were waiting, we were talking to the guy about the area. They were actually in the process of shutting the store down for the winter months, and they would re-open in April. It's just not in the Albanian culture to come to the beach at this time of year, but in the summer everybody flocks to the beach and it's extremely busy. Not only people from the nearby city of Tirana, but this area gets a lot of tourists from Russia and Poland.
He asked what hotel we were staying at, and I showed him a photo of Max!
His wife was taking a while to get back to us, so we decided to go for our bike ride and then stop in on our way back.
This beach would be packed full in the summer.
We are glad we are here at this time of year. And if we were in fact here in the summer, you would find us up in the mountains!
Looking north.
We rode by this huge water park.
That yellow slide on the end looks fun!
Lots of hotels and resorts.
Ruth!
This bunker is being used for beach chair storage.
This bunker has been repurposed as a restaurant.
Down at the far south end of the beach are a lot of fancy new resorts.
This one has a pier with a restaurant and swimming pool.
Almost everything is closed up.
We stopped back in at the Conad, and the manager wasn't there. The cashier lady didn't speak much English, but she phoned the wife and handed the phone to me. Her English was perfect, and she explained that the bank says the charge did not go through, and it might take a day or two to be removed from my account. She also gave me her phone number in case that didn't happen, and guaranteed that if it does go through, she would issue a credit immediately.
Back at Max, I was outside after lunch putting the bikes back on the bike rack. A car drove up, and it was the manager from the Conad store! He just wanted to make sure we had spoken to his wife and got things worked out. How nice is that?
It clouded over and cooled off a bit in the afternoon, but it never did rain.
Every day around 4:30pm we have our own personal happy hour.
A glass or two of wine, and a few games of either backgammon or cribbage.
Sometimes both!
Today, we are moving on for sure! We are headed directly to Berat. We really liked Berat when we were there in the spring, and there is a very nice (but a bit pricey) campground that has a washing machine. So we will spend a night there, and then move on to a nearby hotel parking lot owned by the family that operated the
rafting tour we did in the Osum Canyon in the spring. We've already been in touch, and hope to do some hiking tours with them. The forecast for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is perfect hiking weather!
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And in Canada...
As we are presently on the road (in our RV en route towards Florida), I just caught up with a few days of hour blog entries (I normally read you every morning, that is as regular a routine as coffee!). Sorry for all the little mishaps with your Visa card not working properly in Albania. I’m just wondering about laundry : how do you manage to dry the small items you wash by hand? Do you hang them in your bathroom? Or elsewhere? I know it’s a very trivial question but I’m presently looking for some kind of ‘solution’ to that ‘issue’ myself !!!
ReplyDeleteThank you for following along with us. We are hoping that you are enjoying your time onroute to Florida. It must feel nice to be out of the cold. :-)
DeleteUp until those two instances in that one area we haven't had any issues with using our credit card in Albania, I think that both those stores use the same bank and there was a problem at the terminal end of things or the internet was the issue but in both cases things got sorted out and we were pretty sure that they would.
As for drying clothes, if it is nice outside then we have a clothes line that we tie up outside and hang things on that. If we are in an area like we were in then we also have a small roundish clothes hanger thing that I can hang on the bicycle rack at the end of Max and I put the t-shirts on hangers and hang them there too. If it is rainy then I use the same technique but hang them inside in the bathroom or any other available hanging spot in Max.
That was a minor detail! Look where you are and what you're doing! Any issues, who cares!
ReplyDeleteExactly, and we were pretty sure that it would all sort itself out and it has. Trust us, we didn't waste any time worrying over it. :-)
DeleteNice that you play games, im trying to get my husband more into different games, a bit of a process, but once we are on the road more im hoping he will be "game", lol
ReplyDeleteWe have always enjoyed playing games, even before starting out in the RV life but we have to admit that we play more backgammon and Yahtzee now then we ever did when we had a house. I hope that you can get your husband hooked on a game or two as well. :-)
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