When we initially looked at Google Maps to find out how we could access the river, we saw that it wasn't very far from the hostel that we were staying at. There were a lot of streets that looked like they would lead to the river, but when we looked closely, most of them were dead ends and didn't quite connect.
The older boys had gotten into a routine of going out exploring with each other for an hour or so before dinner, while I stayed at the hostel with the other kids. One day, they came back from one of their excursions very excited that they had found a way to get to the river by going through the neighborhood across from the hostel.
The next morning, I was considering staying at the hostel rather than going on a long walk again. My feet would get tired on these walks. However, knowing that hotter weather and our move from the hostel to a different part of the city would soon be approaching, I decided to let the older kids take the rest of us to the river by this shorter way.
Off we went with the two youngest children each in a stroller. These were used strollers that we bought here in Shkoder from different people selling things on the sidewalk. The first one we bought used to squeak quite loudly wherever we went until we used some olive oil on the wheel. It's navy blue, which tells me that it's about 20 years old. A screw for the handlebar snapped on one of our outings, so it was very awkward to push. One particular boy was a good sport and usually volunteered to push it. We had it for a few weeks and then found one slightly better to replace it.
Anyway, it was a Saturday morning. It ended up being the warmest day that we had had up until that point. I think that it was in the mid eighties (30⁰ C). I kept expecting to arrive at the river at any moment, but we just kept walking and walking in the hot sun.
Eventually we got there. For the record, I think that it took us an hour and a half! When I looked at Google Maps, the blue dot indicating our location showed that we were at the southern bridge. We had seen on the map the week before that the southern bridge was the longer way to access the river. Edward had also ended up there one day. He told us that the road leading to it had narrow or no sidewalks. He didn't want us to go there because it wasn't safe. He hadn't crossed the bridge, which was even more dangerous! It had an old railroad track on it and there were large gaping holes in the pavement of the curb, exposing the river below. I was very nervous having some young children with me who weren't young enough to be in strollers, but not old enough to practice wisdom and caution. We crossed over to the other side, which was better. The height over the river made me nervous too, but we made it.
The views from the bridge made the whole thing worthwhile.
This photo above was the view looking towards the southeast.
The following few were looking towards the north.
The boys led us to a hill with a monument on it. It appeared to have graves around it with young men who had probably been from Shkoder and died fighting in WWII. The hill went up quite a bit higher than the monument. They wanted to go up to the top. It was steep and rocky. We took turns staying below with our youngest, but besides him, we all got a chance to climb to the top.
In person, it was quite something to be able to stand up there and see the whole city, mountains all around, farmland outside of the city, an old fort, and even part of Shkodra Lake.
It's hard to tell from the picture, but we were up very high. The bridges in the center-left are the ones that we had just crossed before we climbed up the hill.
The farmland below was like a patchwork quilt.
I was grateful to see all of this, but I figured that this would be my last trip to explore the outskirts of the city for a while. We were soon supposed to sign papers to rent a house. I knew that my time and energy would need to go towards getting everything ready for us to live there. For now, I would leave the exploring to the older boys.
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