Berat at night

Funny story the other day. We were looking to buy a bottle of raki... the local hooch that everybody in Albania makes from either plums or grapes. 

You can buy commercially made raki, but it's not as good as the local stuff. Usually you can buy the local stuff at a local market, but we haven't been able to find any yet.

Anyhow, we were out picking up a few things and we went into a local shop. I told the shopkeeper (using google translate) what we were looking for, and he grabbed a couple of small plastic glasses and a bottle from under his counter and poured us a couple of shots of his homemade stuff. It was laced with cinnamon and cloves... quite tasty! But he didn't have any for sale... he just wanted us to try it.

So there we were in the shop, with customers coming and going having a shot of his raki. It was pretty funny. I asked him how much we owed, but it was on the house.

Then I sent our host a message asking if she knew of a local market where we could buy some. She said "Oh, there's a bottle in the cabinet. I left it there for you. Enjoy!" I had seen it, but didn't know what it was and hadn't thought much about it. Nice!

We had wanted to go up to the castle and wander around but it's a steep climb up, so we waited until after dinner and did it in the evening.

There is no actual castle as such. It was a fortification where people lived, and people still live up there as well as tourist accommodation and restaurants.

We went up to the main viewpoint overlooking the city of Berat.

Looking across the river at Gorica.

Looking downriver.

We are staying just around the corner on the right.

This is the Church of St. George.

It doesn't look like much of a church because it was renovated into a tourist office (for Albanian tourists... there were no foreign tourists at the time) and residence in the 1980's and then later abandoned. It is in need of renovation, but it doesn't have much historical significance anymore because most of it is not part of the original church structure. Only the ground floor walls are original.

Sunset from the castle wall.

The Holy Trinity Church has a nice view.

This is the part of town where our apartment is.

The Holy Trinity Church was built between the 13th and 14th centuries.

The main entrance gate to the castle community.

On the way back home, we came across a hedgehog. 

We don't think we've ever seen a hedgehog before!

We've got a heat wave coming through this week, and the highs will be around 37C (99F) all week. Fortunately the humidity is very low, but that's still pretty warm. So we are headed out early to do a walk, and then we'll spend the afternoon in the apartment air conditioning before going for a walk again in the evening.

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