Traveling to Albania: Day 7

After the short swimming in the sea and breakfast we left Kraneo campsite and moved further.

Today we are going to stay at the camping near well-known Ksamil beach beside the city of Sarande. There are many good reviews about Ksamil so we are interested to see it on our own.

First we passed by the town of Himare, nice small town with hotels along the road, lovely bay and pebble beach. On the way to Ksamil we wanted to visit Porto Palermo castle and to swim somewhere.

Don’t know how many people there are on the beaches during the hot season but even now place was rather busy. All bays are occupied with bars and restaurants. Beaches are with white sand and sunbeds (many of sunbeds were already got together; it is the end of the season…).

Porto Palermo castle was built by Ali Pasha in 1804. Fort has triangular shape with three powerful pentagonal towers at the corners.

We parked the car and took a short walk to the only entrance to the fort. Entrance fee is 100 lek (0.75 euro) per person.

Fort is small inside. During World War II it was used as a prison.

By stairs we go up to the fort’s terrace….

There are bays just near the fort but they seemed not so charming for us, so we moved further searching for the place to swim. We found the bay just along the road, swim and then continued moving.

We passed by Sarande planning to make a visit tomorrow, but at first sight it seemed that there is nothing interesting to see there. There are lot of hotels along the road, they spread far away from the city center.

We bought some food in the supermarket (or at least something like supermarket) on our way to the campsite.

So we reached Ksamil camping in the town of Ksamil near well-known beaches. Camping is very small and a little bit overcrowded. But the toilet facilities are very modern and there is wifi as well. Another camping Gaci seemed very bad so we decided to stay in Ksamil camping.

We wanted to eat watermelon that we bought in the supermarket, but unfortunately it was absolutely uneatable. We throw away the whole watermelon, drank green tea with cookies and went to explore the beaches of Ksamil.

Firstly we went to the beach nearby the camping (sea is in 2-3 minutes by foot from camping). Water was not clear but it was probably because it was already the second part of the day.

Then by pedestrian road looks like seafront, but with broken lights we reached another beaches, near the centre of the Ksamil town with a lot of bars and people.

There are three small islands seen from the beach. We swam to one of them, it is situated very close from the shore. Overall we liked Ksamil beaches, water is blue and clear, views are nice, bays are lovely and bars looked very modern, but we like more secluded places.

We decided to come back to the camping through the city of Ksamil. There are plenty of hotels (almost all buildings are hotels). There are restaurants and some shops as well in the city.