Tuesday 2nd July, 2019
This morning we woke up on time as this was going to be a travel day. We are getting closer to our destination – Saronida – but first to drive over 400km to Galaxidi on the northern side of the Gulf of Corinth where we are meeting an old ABNAMRO colleague and friend, Maria Logiopoulou.
Breakfast was again served on the rooftop terrace and it was a pleasure sitting in the shade watching swimmers, sunbathers and boats all active down on the beach. After breakfast we collected our stuff from our room and got ourselves ready to hit the road again. We said our goodbyes and chatted about our route with the owner’s son who had reception desk duty. He surprised us with a little gift to take with us – mountain tea and dried oregano . He so admired our travelling spirit and he said he would follow us on my blog. We had a lovely time at the Royal Saranda Hotel as we were made to feel at home here. Even the restaurant owner from next door came to say good bye and wished us a safe journey – my communication with him was in Italian since yesterday evening…….
So according to our TomTom in the car, we were leaving Sarandë round 10.30 and arriving in Galaxidi at 16.30 – I was shocked as that meant we would be driving for 6 hours but obviously I forgot that theaters is an hour difference with Greek time.
The road in Albania was easy going with hardly any traffic – lucky for us we left the mountains behind us or rather we were travelling alongside the mountains curving our way around the agricultural fertile plains.
Within 45 minutes we reached the Albanian-Greek border where we stopped for coffee and planned our route further to Galaxidi. We picked up the motorway at Igoumenitsa which is a harbour town and quite busy.
As soon as we were on the road again, we had a fantastic motorway all to ourselves. No traffic, no maniac car drivers and no heavy lorries – but the toll fees were quite hefty – in total we paid over €15,00 for the whole trip down to the point where we left the motorway to drive further to Galaxidi. No wonder Greece has a great deficit – these roads were built by German and Italian companies but there is hardly any toll income from these motorways as they are not optimized! Our motorway ended just outside Patras where we got a very good view of the bridge crossing the Gulf of Corinth.
Driving on the secondary road, we had both coastline and some mountain road and I must say it was all very scenic. We decidedto make a quick pit stop at Nafpaktos, a historical strategic naval station controlling access to the Gulf of Corinth. This town with huge bastions changed hands many times during the Crusades and the Ottoman- Venetian wars.
We went for a short stroll along the inner harbour where beautiful sailing boats were moored and decide to have a coffee for me and ice cream for Gerry at the local cafe.
When we were back on the road we only had to drive for 45 minutes along the coastline and once again we had very delightful scenery . Once in Galaxidi contacted my friend Maria and we made plans to meet that same evening and go for dinner .
Galaxidi is another fascinating nautical village and in its grand days built some 100 sea faring ships. We will have to find out more about its history when we visit the museum.
We are staying at a really lovely privately run hotel – Mira Mare x it’s delightful! And we do actually see the sea from our balcony
And we ended our evening with getting to know Maria’s family – her lovely daughter’s, Eva and Faye and her charming husband Gordon x we will be seeing them again tomorrow!
