Gjakova (continued)

Peja - the clear waters of the Drini waterfall, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Well it was a good thing that I posed teh last blog unfinished as within a minute the electricity fell out and I would have lost all my typing and that would have been very annoying....

Well, there we were in the hotel, being called on by a woman and it turned out that we had to mocve rooms. wjhich we did, even if it is very annoying. Even more annoying when after a walk around town we found the hotel that, according to the (Bradt) guide may or may not be open as a hotel by teh summer of 2008, was in fact opena nd was a much nicer hotel than where we had just checked into... sometimes it goes that way. And yet, today, here in Prizren we went straight to the hotel which may or may not be open by sumer 2008 to find that it was a very nice looking hotel but is, in fact, not yet open... typical. So we ended up staying in an old Communist hotel opposite. Seeing as we mean on stayiong innthis very interesting city a few days it is a pity we could not find a decent hotel.

Anyway, back in Gjakova, we found a city which ahd largely been detroyed by teh war but was beuing rebuilt, quite sympathetically inj places, namely teh old bazaar area, with its low level, stone and wooden shops and workshops, bars and restaurants, withb dotted in between a few old hoiuses from before including some kullas and old Ottoman houses.

The eearly evening had Fred in bed and me wandering around town with my camera being asked by some country boys/farmerts to take their photos, which all turned out so very well, that I decided to bring the memory stick to the photo shop and have them printed for teh lads.. which had me ending up posing on a tractor wjhile they figured out how to take a picture!

The evening was spent very nicely under the starts in a courttyartd of an old Ottoam mansion, where we tasted our first Kosovan wine - not as bad as our Syrian wine experience and it got better as the evening went on....

The days here are hot enough and very sunny but it cools off nicely in the evenengs and until today it has not been humid. Unfortunately, a cold front came through last night giving us some rain today, much cloud and some humidity. It has not exactly bene our best day, as we are feeling quite tired after our busy schedule and the bus trip from Gjakova to Prizren showed up Kosovo at its very worst, with lietter scattered everywhere, ribon developments of garages, tyre repair centres, car recycling plants, exhaust repairers, car washes, parts dealers, more tyre shops and so on. Inbetween remnants of old Communist time industrial plants and gravel pits.