A foam-topped coupe of deep amber cocktail and a black tumbler of crushed ice on a promenade table, with Himarë bay and a wooded headland behind them in low sun

Rruga 2 Dhjetori · Spile

Across the strip, facing the water

The promenade in front of the bar carries no cars, so the seating simply runs out across it — low tables, cushioned chairs, a pergola over the near half and a plane tree, floodlit from its base, standing through the middle of it.

The hour before dark

The bay goes gold and the headland goes flat

This stretch of seafront looks out roughly south-south-west, open sea straight ahead, with the far arm of the bay closing the view about a kilometre off to the south-east. In the last hour that arm loses its depth and reads as one wooded shape; the sea gives up its blue and goes the same warm grey-gold as the hills behind it.

Spile Beach runs along the other side of the promenade, and its edge is about fifteen metres from the bar's own door.

The bar's pergola at night — a whitewashed plane trunk, a steel frame and a shelf of bottles lit blue behind the counter

After that

The tree becomes the light

Once the sun is off the bay the biggest light out here is the uplighter at the foot of the plane tree, which throws the whole canopy yellow-green. Behind it the shelf of bottles is washed blue, the sign stands lit on its posts above the roofline, and the deck carries its own lighting — two lit columns, a strip along the edge of the boards and a candle jar on each table.

Measured

the bay, an hour before dark
#c7af80 · 41°
the glass on the table
#9d760e · 44°
the plane tree, lit from below
#a6a03d · 56°
the back bar
#466ce0 · 226°
the sign
#21d3ec · 187°

Each swatch is the mean of every pixel above a luminance floor inside one region of one of these photographs, and the degree figure is that set’s circular mean hue. Taken over 6,673 to 95,282 pixels. No colour temperature is quoted: these are saturated lamps and a fluorescent sign, far enough off the Planckian locus that the usual approximation returns its own constant rather than a reading.

The rest of the seafront

Nine more inside fifty metres

This is a dense strip: nine other named businesses stand within fifty metres of this door — two more bars, three restaurants, a souvlaki counter, a guest house, a phone shop and a hairdresser — and the nearest bakery is a few steps beyond them. The guide's Himarë after dark page lists what is open along here, and the nightlife guide carries the same for the rest of the coast.