Christmas in swimming trunks

This time, it's a little easier to go from Gjirokastra to Ksamil. Ksamil is located in southern Albania by the sea with a view of the Greek island of Corfu and is beautiful. It is a small village that appears very sleepy in December. The restaurants and hotels for tourists are closed and only supermarkets and individual cafes are open. We stumble out of the bus and feel right at home here - it's what we've been looking for and now need to recover. We are also lucky with our apartment: it is a modern 2-room apartment with two sunny balconies, a warm air conditioning and an additional heater, so the freezing is over for now. The sun shines every day and it is about 16 degrees. Because we want to spend cozy Christmas, we stay here for a week.

On Jakob's birthday, we have brunch on the balcony, stroll along the beach and walk over two hills to the other side of the peninsula. We encounter five small puppies who are very trusting and when you stroke them, they topple over to be tickled on the belly. A nice surprise happens afterwards when an older man on the beach asks us if we want to drink coffee. We think why not, so we sit down in his cafe. But it turns out that the man invites us to his house, where we sit on his terrace, his wife brings us coffee and mandarins, and we have an entertaining conversation with the older couple with broken words and gestures, in which the occasional misunderstanding made us laugh.

We sleep in, have breakfast on our balcony and let our souls dangle. Every day we go to the sea and swim a round. The water is cold, but it is crystal clear and turquoise to dark blue, so we just have to get in. It also gets easier every day and we can stay in the water longer, afterwards we always feel like we've been in the sauna. It's strange not to be with our family for Christmas and we miss the annual tradition and the Christmas spirit. On Christmas Eve, we try to make raclette without a raclette machine: we throw everything into one pot and a pile of cheese. It tastes good and the red wine from Albania too.

The beaches and the sea in Ksamil are a little paradise. We hike through the Butrint National Park and visit the archaeological cities. It feels good to leave the house and be immediately in nature, without many cars and crowds of people. We also enjoy the silence and our togetherness, because as nice as new human encounters are, it's also nice to have peace and quiet again.

We spend one more night in Saranda, where we stroll along the beach promenade and jump into the water, and we are glad that we stayed in Ksamil for so long: Saranda is built up with hotels, much bigger, busier and more hectic. Now we continue to the port city of Durres, where we board the ferry on the evening of December 27th, which will take us overnight to Bari, in Italy. There we want to couchsurf, then we will continue to Rome on Saturday, where we will meet our families on Sunday. We are very excited to see everyone again and are looking forward to the days with twelve people in our house in Rome.