Berat – Apollonia – Saranda

Saturday, April 27

After our hostess,Vassilika’s (too) abundant and delicious breakfast, we took a walk down to Berat’s riverside, as Enea had advised that the morning light would be good for more photographs of the town’s thousand windows.  (Note: Our room has eight of those windows!)  

As we left the old town of Berat, we passed a man with a live lamb in a burlap sack slung over his shoulder.  Tomorrow is the Orthodox Christian Easter and the little wooly one was destined to spend the holiday roasting on a spit for the traditional Easter dinner.  

We returned to Berat’s fortress again, in order to see the church-turned-museum iconography.  The Church of the Assumption had been the cathedral and seat of the bishop of the Berat area and, though it has been built and rebuilt several times, it still contains some of the 16^th-century icon master, Onufri’s original masterpieces, along with reproductions and replicas of others. In 1967, during the dictatorship, it was closed down, along with all the churches in the country, and fell into disrepair. Because it is now a museum and not an active church, we were able to go behind the iconostasis to see the altar, the reverse side of the iconostasis, and the frescoes on the rear wall.  As we have come to expect, Enea added great value to our visit, explaining the symbolism of the calendar embedded in the floor of the central aisle.  We continued our Iconostasis 101 lesson in the exhibition galleries of the church-turned-museum.  We were glad to have returned to see all this this morning, especially as we were able to drive into the castle, park near the church, and lessen the climb! 

Leaving Berat, we drove through the countryside to the hilltop Monastery of Ardenica.  Before entering the active monastery complex, we stopped for a coffee at an adjacent café where we sat on a covered patio and enjoyed a view of the approaching rain across the plain below. Because national hero Skanderbeg was married at the monastery in the 15^th century, it was not destroyed during the Communist regime. For a time, it was used as a military barracks, and ultimately the recognition its important cultural status afforded it an official protected status.  Enea explained some of the secrets of the creation of the church’s frescoes, including their original (now hidden) layers, motifs and the techniques and materials that ensured their durability and resistance to the forces of time and nature.  As we ventured upstairs, he cautioned us to tread on designated areas of the 200-year-old wooden floor, so we could view the upper levels of the frescoes. 

As we left the monastery, it began to rain in earnest and it continued as we traveled to the Apollonia archeological site. We visited the museum there to get a sense of the history of the area, and the succession of its inhabitants – Ilyrians, Greek colonists, and Roman empire builders.  By the time we finished in the museum, the clouds have lifted and the rain was gone, so we were able to wander around the excavated site. The ancient city walls ran for 2 ½ miles and were thought to enclose about 60,000 inhabitants; a very small fraction of the city has been excavated.  What has been discovered is impressive enough; a temple dedicated to Apollo, a small theater (Odeon), Agora, small shrines and traces of the ancient irrigation system. 

After a quick stop for a lunch of local meat pies (across from an abandoned warehouse of a Marxist – Leninist agricultural collective), we were on the road.  On our afternoon ride through the countryside, we encountered numerous concrete “mushrooms” (bunkers) and we shared the road with horses, cows, sheep and goats.  We drove through a mountain pass in the Llogara National Park, a thickly forested area near the coast. The drive along the Ionian coast was particularly beautiful, with the road climbing and descending mountain slopes that ran right to the sea.  We passed through many small villages within sight of Corfu and several other Greek islands just a short distance off shore.  

Among the village we passed  through was the hometown of Enea, and he regaled us with local lore – everything from tales of bureaucratic bungling and corruption to the legends explaining everything from natural phenomena to the location of chapels, death dates, and the number of houses in a given village.  Enea is a gifted storyteller, very well educated, multilingual, devoted family man, and keen observer of the world we live in; he also has a great sense of humor and has added so much to our enjoyment of these days.

We stopped for a cold drink along Porto Palermo (or Panoramic Bay) with view of Ali Pasha’s fortress atop a hill on a spit of land in the bay.  From the vine-draped patio, the view of the castle above the sparkling water was panoramic, indeed.

The final leg of today’s trip brought us to the resort city of Saranda, on Albania’s southern coast.  Our hotel is right along the water and we enjoyed our happy hour on our balcony overlooking the bay and city lights.  After fresh fish for dinner at a nearby tavern, we walked along the seaside promenade and back to the hotel to stay up too late, once again.

At midnight we heard the bells and fireworks to celebrate Orthodox Easter here in Albania.