Peter and I spent two weeks in Zea Marina in Piraeus, Athens on our own while Kiki and Cora went home to Spain for holidays. We had planned to go back to Ormos Varis for this time but the lure of dock electricity and 24/7 air con was too much, especially as Peter was going to be doing tax. In the past this has involved lots of bad temper and me going off for spa treatments to escape and getting flowers as an apology etc - but wonder of wonders, this year it all went very calmly. Even though we were both on diets and having AFD's as well. The area around us here has many very up market clothing, accessories and shoe shops but the pavements are in such bad repair it spoils wandering around as you constantly have to watch your feet for broken pavers, sunken inspection hatches, slippery tiles, uneven road edges and gutters, not to mention the traffic. You definitely have to look in both directions even on one way streets! We've heard that they have just finished re paving all the streets in the Athens central area so we'll see. We spent one afternoon and night in the Plaka district of Athens with all the tiny crowded streets full of locals and tourists and ended up having dinner just under the Acropolis on a rooftop. Very pretty.

Just before we left Zea Marina we had a bit of inadvertent pay back on a nearby boat that had played horrible loud rap type music all afternoon. That night we decided to watch the 1970 Waterloo movie with lots of load cannons and artillery. About half way through I realised I had left the two outside speaker zones on!

Once Kiki and Cora got back we spent one day sorting out then headed off for the Corinth canal. This is a very spectacular manmade short cut across the mainland of Greece that saves boats having to travel around the Peloponnese Peninsular. This is just it's second season of limited opening after having closed due to a land slide. It is 21 m at its narrowest and we are 10m so it was quite a close fit! I would say in fact, that we had a lot less than 5 m on each side. See the pics. About 20 minutes later we came out and continued on towards our final Greek destination of Preveza for checking out of Greece.

In Preveza our plan had been to tie up to the town quay for one night and check out for Albania for the next day. But - the town quay was full so we ended up in the marina, the first thing that went wrong. While Peter and Kiki were struggling with the rather unwieldy way the marina manages their power and water (involving an app and a dashboard and credit card funds, which all had to get sorted before the office closed for the day) I went to sound out the immigration process only to find after a very confusing conversation with the Coast Guard and an even more confusing phone call with the Port Police that everything is closed on weekends anyway! Completely frustrated I put a question up on a Facebook sailing group I belong to and got several immediate and very helpful answers. I take back some of the things I have said about Facebook. In the end I made an appointment with an agent for Monday morning. So - one more expensive night at the marina (226.00 euro) and another Schengen day gone. We played with the idea of heading on up to Corfu to check out but couldn't find out for sure if they were open weekends either (another few frustrating and confusing phone calls there too). Our agent from Samos told us that all the islands and towns have their own rules!!! AAAGGGHHHH!!

Anyhoo - We finally got hold of Sofia who turned up at 9.00 to check us out and we got away to Sarande, Albania, around 11.00. A very easy but longish day. We arrived just on dark and checked in on the VHF with the harbourmaster who asked us to anchor. As we now had no internet or phones we just sat there to see what would happen. During dinner the local agent we had contacted called us on the radio and we met her ashore and completed formalities and got sim cards. The Vodafone agency was in a tiny little shop crammed with people buying everything from pet food to alcohol. It was nearly midnight before we got all sorted. Going ashore was interesting the next day - we jammed the dinghy in amongst the police jet skis and walked the wrong way through immigration at the ferry terminal getting funny looks from the passengers queuing but not the officials who just waved us on. Quite strange, but apparently they know if you are on a yacht in the harbour and have checked in.

Sarande town is very USSR 1960's looking unattractive concrete blocks and not in very good repair. Most places want cash euro or US dollars not their local lek. We only stayed the one day. Peter and I went out for a meal as recommended by friends who were just here last week. It was very good but we didn't get a sense of anything being particularly Albanian but then again we were on the waterfront. There was an Elvis Bar that we couldn't help having a drink in. "Elvis" was a grumpy older man who said it was out of season for Elvis as only the young noisy people were in town and it was too hot anyway and what were we doing there at this time of year? The old people come in May/June and Sept/Oct. This is when Elvis comes on!!!! Hilarious…!!

Our next stop was Kakome where we met a New Zealand couple on "Loki". We invited them on board for drinks and arranged to have dinner in the next stop, they ae going the same way as us. After one night (noisy with day trippers and pirate party ships) we moved on to Himara just an hour and a half up the coast. I had seen that an Australian boat with Bruce on board, who we met first in Rhodes and subsequently saw in Turkiye a few times, was not far away so contacted him. He didn't like where he was so came on down to Himara and joined us with the NZers for pizza ashore. He had one of his sons with him. A good fun catch up which finished with drinks aboard EN. Bruce gave us lots of tips for Montenegro - very helpful. There are. number of boat we know up there so it should be fun.

Vlore was the next stop about 4 hours north again. We came across a floaty child's paddling pool thing in the ocean. We rather nervously fished it out hoping there wasn't a body in it but it was full of kids beach toys, clothes and some poor little girls doll collection. We think it must have fallen off a charter boat as it was too heavy to have blown away. The coastline between these little towns/cities is very barren with high hills straight down to the water. Albania is not really geared up for the cruising crowd, most of the tourists are from places like Poland, Hungary, Slovenia etc we are told. We don't feel unsafe but have been warned that the general poverty makes theft an issue. It was also suggested that one not get into an argument with anyone as they can be armed…. It's only been 30 years since the country opened up after Yugoslavia broke up when Tito died.

We have now arrived in beautiful Montenegro to a warm welcome into a very upmarket marina in a mini Santuary Cove-esque environment. We had no idea what to expect here but so far it is all very positive. Lovely scenery friendly people and clean water.