Today we were up promptly for an 8:30 am departure to Durres and Berat by minibus. It was around a 45 minute drive to Durres through flat countryside with considerable suburban development. Durres is the main port for Albania and dates back to Roman times, if not before. The main sight here was a Roman amphitheatre which had been discovered and excavated in the 1960’ties.
It was quite impressive but excavations were somewhat limited because it had all been built on and there was a limit on the number of buildings that could be knocked down to enable the excavations to take place. We then walked a few hundred yards to the Archaeological Museum, a modern building, created to display some of the many artefacts excavated and were given a fascinating tour by the Museum director. He was particularly proud of some early glassware discovered and also of a complete kiln for firing pottery which occupied one corner of a display room whose outer wall had to be taken down to enable the kiln to be moved into position.
Then we had an hour and a half’s journey south to Berat where we saw a substantial mediaeval castle built on a high promontory. Within the castle there were a fair number of houses one of which had been turned into a good restaurant for lunch before visiting a fine medieval church which because of its age had been left undisturbed during the communist period. Afterwards the minibus took us down to the bottom of hill where the old part of the town was built.
Then a journey of similar length took us back to Tirana with general aircraft talk and plans for the flight tomorrow to Romania.We, with one other plane, are routing via Belgrade for fuel and then to Sibiu while the other aircraft are stopping off at another airfield; it turns out that this is somewhat out of the direct route so plans for these may change. At least the weather for the flights is looking good.
