Up into the old town, and the last of it on foot

In Himarë old town — Kastro — the walled village on the hill above the coastal town, in Vlorë County, southern Albania. It sits about seventy metres from Himarë Castle and thirty-six from the church of Saint Sergius and Bacchus. The sea is roughly a kilometre away and a hundred and ninety metres below.

No. Café Butterfly stands inside the old town that the castle encloses, not on any fortification. Its terrace is edged by a mortared limestone parapet of the same kind as the garden walls around the houses nearby, at the top of a steep drop toward the bay.

On foot. The old town is reached by a narrow road that climbs from the seafront, and the lanes inside it are too tight for a car, so the last stretch is walked. Wear something you can climb a hill in; the surface is stone and uneven.

The old town itself — stone houses in rough limestone, a number of them roofless, on stepped lanes between them — along with Himarë Castle and several Byzantine churches, the nearest of which is Saint Sergius and Bacchus, thirty-six metres from the terrace.

There is a roof of split cane laid over peeled timber poles, with a grapevine trained through part of it. It filters the light rather than blocking it, so the terrace stays bright and the bars of shadow move across the tables through the afternoon.

The bay directly below with the town along its edge, a wooded ridge running out to the right and ending in the water, and the open Ionian beyond both. Late in the day the sky behind the ridge turns apricot and the sea goes flat and grey.