Rest day in Ksamil, Albania

Oct 3, 2022

Day 29 of 43: 11.7 km, 170m climb, 0:42 Moving, 3:29 Total, 55.6 kph max

Country	Distance	Climbing
Slovenia	352.2	5149
Italy	29.3	346
Croatia	950.9	11,430
Bosnia & Herzegovina	211.0	1444
Montenegro	29.3	185
Albania	529.7	8062
Total	2102.4	26,616

Rest days on these tours are just so great. Especially after such a big ride – climbing over 2600m in a day takes a toll on your leg muscles. The hotel here in Ksamil puts on a great breakfast – we ate late, slow and large. At 9, Bob, Niek and I rode 5 km to the famous Butrint National Park. We ended up spending three hours wandering all over, marveling at the ancient ruins, checking out the excellent museum and loving the peaceful, shaded paths and low crowd factor. There is an Acropolis, a very well preserved Greek theater, and many other interesting buildings (ruins) from various eras. Well worth visiting if you have a day to kill here.

We rode back and checked out a small island we had spied on the map. It’s only about 100m off shore and we concocted a plan to buy beer and tie it to ourselves to swim over and have a party.

It looked doable but in the end we just bought beer and lunch provisions and had a party on our spacious balcony instead. I posted on our tour WhatsApp group and after a couple of hours, just as Bob and I finished the last of our beers, Peter and Tom showed up with more. It was a jolly time, relaxed in the shade, trading stories.

That lasted from 2-5 then we headed out to dinner at 6. We had independently found a fantastic seafood restaurant and had a wonderful dinner there, again with a beautiful sunset view.

Ice cream for dessert from the market on the way home capped off a very relaxing and fun day. Tomorrow, back to work, for our final full day in Albania.