Adriatic Trip Day 15: Corfu and Butrint

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Overnight, the Orion was repositioned off the coast of Corfu, an island near the northern part of Greece’s western coastline. With its strategic location, Corfu has considerable history, including a 6th-century fortress and a quaint Old Town. During our walking tour, we were treated to tastes of a local spirit, raki, at a shop in town. Many of us bought some, and we also bought some of their limoncello to compare with our home-made version. We also had a few minutes to roam around by ourselves, and Kenna and I did one of our favorite explorations, visiting a local grocery store.

At the pier in Corfu, we were docked across the pier from a Holland America Line cruise ship. The other cruise ship made the Orion seem very small, and indeed, the other cruise ship accommodates about 2000 guests while the Orion only accommodates about 100. Not having been on a ship that big, it was hard for us to imagine what that is like. There was also a sizable luxury yacht, the Launchpad, docked nearby. It is thought to belong to Mark Zuckerberg, and we speculated that he might have been in the vicinity to attend Jeff Bezos’s wedding in Venice.

During lunch, the Captain repositioned the Orion just off the coast of Sarandë, Albania. Albania’s time zone is one hour earlier than Greece’s, so we suddenly had an extra hour (which was not wasted: there was a photography lecture on the ship as we moved).

At Sarandë, we boarded buses for the short ride to Butrint National Park, a world heritage site featuring extensive Roman and post-Roman ruins. The ruins were generally well preserved, an effort that is continuing. Many of the floor mosaics were not visible to us because they have been covered to protect them until more permanent protection can be provided.

Our walking tour of Butrint was very warm and sunny, so after the tour we had an opportunity to stop and have a cold drink. I opted for a local beer, Korça, which proved to be a very respectable Pilsener.

On our bus ride back to Sarandë, the guide talked a bit about the Communist era in Albania, which was more severe than in many other Eastern European countries. The Albanian leader, Enver Hoxha, was very paranoid and had over 173,000 concrete bunkers constructed around the country to guard against invasions. As a result of Hoxha’s paranoia and isolationism, Albania became the third poorest country in the world. While still poor (apparently now the third poorest country in Europe) and rather corrupt, they have made substantial progress and seem to have a very optimistic attitude.

Albania is a separate country, and the only country on our trip that is not a member of the European Union or the Schengen Agreement (which eliminates internal customs borders between member states). Accordingly, I expected that there would be some customs or immigration formalities, but there were none. Albania aspires to EU membership, and perhaps they want to be as friendly to EU visitors as possible.

This article is part of a series about our recent trip to Italy, Greece, Albania, and Croatia. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.