Welcome to travels with Todd

I try to take responsibility when I make mistakes so I’ll chalk up some of my end of day disappointment to my misreading of Intrepid’s itinerary. I noted on my return that the specific wording read that we’d finish the day at the “Bay of Vlora.” My error was interpreting that to mean the town of Vlora. Instead, we drove through Vlora to Orikum – “a subdivision of the municipality of Vlora.”

This misinterpretation was actually the second of three mildly irksome events of the day. The first happened at the sunrise birdwatching when my camera batteries died and I’d left replacements in my hotel room. This situation was easily rectified by switching to using my phone to take some of the pictures you saw in both this album and in the previous post.

Here’s something I didn’t misinterpret: Intrepid’s itinerary described our stay as a “guesthouse.” To me, the place we stayed

is a hotel not a guesthouse. Our Shala River stay had the feel of a guesthouse.

Entering the hotel, we (the group and I) found the overall attitude was more about saying no than saying yes. I try to understand cultural differences but hotels are in the hospitality business and, to me, that means doing all you can to accommodate your guests. At the Hotel Maor, they had signs prohibiting food in the rooms, wouldn’t allow guests to take towels from their room to the pool (and didn’t provide towels at the pool either, but told some in the group they could purchase one at the convenience store), had posted restrictions on using the lobby water cooler after 10:00, and wouldn’t provide a second room key. All of this became mildly frustrating.

(It’s common throughout much of the world to require guests to use their room keys to activate anything that uses electricity. In some places, it’s simply a matter of closing a circuit and any card will accomplish that. However, it’s becoming more common for these cards and circuits to contain an RFID chip so that only the room key works. From the prospect of conserving energy this makes some sense. And, of course, it reduces the hotel’s costs, too. However, despite their no food policy, my room had a refrigerator. If I put anything in there, once I left the room with my key, that appliance, like the air conditioner, the lights, and so on became inoperable.) 

My room itself was fairly basic but it afforded a view of the pool the Maor appears to share with the Naos Hotel.

We’d arrived at something of an in between time so some in the group took advantage of the pool despite the towel restriction.

Because it was late in the season, many of the nearby restaurants were closed. I think the entire group ended up at separate tables at a nearby Piceri called Al Mare where I found the pizza rather ordinary. The day’s final frustration came when I tried to start up my laptop and the screen looked like this

for an uncomfortably long time. I got it working after a pair of reboots.

There’s got to be a morning after

If Wednesday wasn’t the best of days, Thursday’s adventures were something of an improvement. It started with the rather meager breakfast buffet in the hotel lobby. You see, I had little concern regarding the narrow selection of food because something caught my eye that gave me reason to celebrate. Among the packages of various flavored tisanes, I saw this:

[From lastdodo]

Çaj i zi is black tea. For the first time since my arrival in Albania, I could sit at a table with my favorite beverage. And this alone was enough to have me forgive the shortcomings I detailed above. So much did I savor the several cups I imbibed, I took no other notice of any jentacular accompaniment.

The next order of business was to approach B to tell him about my computer issue because, while he works primarily with Apple products, this was likely within the realm of his professional expertise. Although it didn’t prove necessary (and I didn’t expect it would be), I was fully prepared to gnathonize to the best of my ability if such flattery would cajole him into doing a bit of work. I’m not certain what switches he turned off or on but he proved to be my angel of the morning and I’ve had no problems since.

I also noted above that it was late in the season but the weather was still mild and pleasant and the Bay of Vlora – an arm of the Adriatic sea – and the nearby Radhimë beach beckoned a certain contingent of the Intrepid group. As an indifferent swimmer and someone disinclined to apricate, I was not among them.

Luckily, neither was J. So the two of us decided to bus into Vlora and try to explore the city a bit. And that’s where the first adventure begins.