Around or Through Albania?

[ac_elite]

Greetings,

My wife and I will be touring with our ST1300 for summer of 08. Starting in Amsterdam making our way to Spain, up the southern coast of France to Italy, Greece the Western Balkan and back to Amsterdam via Prague and Vienna. We have plan most of route, where I need a bit of help is for the ride from Nothern Greece to the Adriatic Coast of Croatia.

I have read several posts here and on other forums on this route, and I still do not have a clear idea of what to really expect. Currently our plan is to enter Macedonia at the Florina border to Bitola and Ohrid to eventually make our way to Petrovac, Budva in Serbia & Montenegro, then west along the coast of Croatia back towards central Europe.

Since ultimately our goal is to do the Adriatic coast of Croatia it seems that choices to get to Dubrovnik are limited when you are coming in from northern Greece.

From research I have done, the best way to do this seems to be north to Tetovo then east to Skopje north to Prishtina all around Albania on E65-E80 north to Podgorica. We wanted to avoid Albania. We will be travelling with both our Canadian and French passports (shipping the ST from Winnipeg Canada to Amsterdam) so entry requirements and documentation for the bike looks pretty straight forward (insurrance will be purchased from "motorcyclexpress", but I would be really curious to find out if someone has done this ride how are the roads and can we realistically aim for 1 day of travel to do the 500 km or so between Skopje and Budva? or at least to Podgorica.

Or should we altogether review this route and go through Albania instead taking the E852 east of Ohrid to Elbasan, Tirana and Durres then the E762 south to Croatia via Shkoder and Podgorica which appear more direct and attractive.

Our aversion to Albania is based on the info we have gathered about the poor quality of the roads, we are absolutely not opposed to go there for any other reasons, but I honestly do not want to deal with really poor or dangerous road conditions with 2 up on a heavy bike that is not design for gravel or dirt road.

Or does someone have a better suggestion altogether to get from Northern Greece to the Croatian Coast?

Thanks