After all the hiking and jaw dropping scenery in the Albanian Alps, the last couple of days have seemed kind of sedate. I left Shkoder early on a bus bound for the capital city, Tirana. The bus pulled in and the bus right next to us was leaving for my destination in ten minutes. I don’t think my feet even had a chance to touch the pavement in Tirana it was so fast. Anyway, I’m now in the port town of Durres on the Adriatic Sea. If you’re taking a ferry from Italy to Albania, this is where you land. Also, because this is an international port it’s a really convenient place to rent a car, which I did, again, and it’s the main reason I came here. I got a Volkswagon Polo this time.

There’s not much left of Durres Castle these days, just one lonely tower and some scattered remnants of the town wall. This has always been a very important port, though, dating back to the Illyrians in pre Roman times. Today it’s a relaxing seaside town. They also have a small archeological museum that I checked out. There were some cool pieces in there, but nothing too exciting.

Finally, Durres has it’s own Roman Theatre that’s largely unexcavated. They did find a church and a couple of mosaics right in the middle of it, though, which is kind of unusual for a theatre like this.

Having explored Durres and after securing my own wheels for the next couple of weeks, I hit the road for some day tripping. First, a bit north to Kruje. Kruje is a really popular day trip from Tirana and that was my original plan, but having gotten a glimpse of the traffic in Tirana, I decided to change things up a bit. Kruje Castle was where Albania’s most famous hero, Skanderbeg, ruled from. Inside is a large Skanderbeg Museum where I learned a lot more about the legend. His kingdom was the principality of Alban and he adopted the double headed eagle emblem, which is where Albania gets it’s name and national flag from, so he’s kind of a big deal.

The coolest part of the museum, Skanderbegs helmet and sword, turned out to be replicas. Bummer! The actual helmet and sword are supposedly in a museum in Vienna, so guess where I need to go now?

A bit further down the hill from Kruje were the ruins of Albanopolis, which is where everyone lived before moving up to Kruje in the 14th century. There really wasn’t much there, but it was just a quick detour, so no harm done. On a side note, while Kosovo has a thing for Bill Clinton, Albania apparently has a thing for Dubya.

The George W. Bush statue may not have the same grandeur of the Bill Clinton statue in Kosovo, but at least Dubya got a bakery/gelateria named after him. There’s also a bar/cafe right across the street named after him too.

I made a big loop out of my day trip by next going out to the tip of the Cape of Rodon to see Rodoni Castle. This was a very small site and was a very small castle even in its prime, but it’s arguably Albania’s most important castle given it’s location. The drive and then short walk out to the castle was a mini adventure in itself. The roads out here look like chewed bubble gum. But the views of the Adriatic were amazing!

Also on the Cape of Rodon is a fortification from a much different era in Albania’s history, their communist era. Four large bunkers and one small lookout way on top of the hill. Albania’s former communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, was apparently extremely paranoid that western forces were planning to invade Albania that he had cement bunkers built all over the country. I mean everywhere! I even saw a half dozen or so in Valbone and Theth way up in the mountains. Now they’re like freckles on the landscape for all to enjoy.

One of the nice things about renting a car is I can make stops on my way to the next city, and on my way out of Durres, I stopped at two sites which turned out to be really cool. One of the drawbacks to renting a car is that when I go out in the morning to find one of the tires flat, my site seeing gets delayed. Luckily there was a tire shop a few blocks away and the super nice Albanian dude had the tire patched and me back on the road for a grand total of about fifteen minutes and three bucks. Then I was off to the first place on my list, Bashtove Castle.

I guess this was primarily a military outpost because there’s absolutely nothing inside. It’s just four magnificent walls with nothing but miles and miles of farms in all directions. It really stands out when you first see it. I enjoyed walking around those walls though.

At little further south on my way, I stopped at one of the better preserved archeological sites in Albania, Apollonia. It was originally an Illyrian city in the 2nd or 3rd century BC, and later, Roman. It’s a big place and not everything has been excavated yet, but what has been is very impressive. The Roman Theatre is still almost completely buried, for example. I can’t even imagine what treasures must be buried here!

That’s gonna wrap it up for this edition. There was one other site today, but since it was closer to the next stop, and because I’m exhausted, I’ll include it in the next post. Stay tuned…