At the mention of Albania, many of you will either be checking google maps to see where on earth we are talking about, or you’ll be picturing gangs kidnapping poor westerners ( a la “Taken”) in a post Stalinist backdrop… but seriously, forget all of that and prepare yourself for one of South Eastern Europe’s most beautiful and rugged countries, super friendly people, safe to travel around, great food and a wealth of history cocooned in the hands of UNESCO.

We flew into the capital – Tirana – in the upper middle of the country, surrounded by hills and mountains.  With all the city improvements going on this is fast becoming a very nice little capital to stop by and visit for a day or so; the terrible traffic of past years quickly being pushed out of the centre to be replaced with leafy pedestrianised streets and areas, such as the brand new Skanderberg Square whose 40,000 sq metres has a camber that will have an all covering water feature to keep in cooler in the summer months.  The city has given its communist buildings of the past a colourful makeover and integrates Enver’s obsession with having bunkers across the city and the country in a way that keeps the history but presents it in an integrated fashion.  Bars and restaurants are plenty, from traditional to trendy and there are plenty of good hotels right in the centre to lay your head…we opted to spend our first night at the Tirana International, right on Skanderberg square, free parking to get in and out easily, great views (from what used to be Tirana’s tallest building), really nice rooms and a perfect terrace to have breakfast from and enjoy the views across the square.

Enver Hoxha, the Marxist-Leninist Prime Minister who ruled the country for over 40 years, who was so hard core communist that he even challenged both the Soviets and the Chinese that they were not communist enough!  Paranoid that he had enemies on all sides, he built nearly 200,000 bunkers, some of which now shelter art and the odd tourist trying to get some shade on a sunny day.

The network of European free walking tours are always our starting point when we find ourselves in these cities and a 2-3 hour tour is the best way to get orientated on the area, the country, its people and its history.  Our guide – Eri – had loads of facts for us and gave it in a humourful and relaxed style as we wound our way around the city.  You’ll get to see the hero of Albania – Skanderberg; one of the few mosques that the communists left standing; the symbol of the city, the clock tower, rebuilt so many times that who knows what it originally looked like;  one of the two remaining places in the ex-communist

Police line up…Albanian style

world to find a statue of Stalin; the quirky pyramid that was originally a museum to Enver but has since been abandoned whilst the city decides what to do with it next; and the trendy Blloku area that was the preserve of the communist elite and is now, ironically the vanguard of capitalism in the city with the smiling face of Colonel Sanders smiling into the garden of Enver’s old house (although no Mc Donalds here yet!).

Yummy Fergese!

For lunch and dinner we wanted to get straight into the local food – You’ll find the cuisine a mix between balkan (meaty, with a lot of sheep, goat and pork (see Batchekism box),  and greek (gyros, dips, stuffed vegetables, tasty breads), plus Lyssa’s favourites of tripe and intestines (these insides of Albania we talk of)..  Me, I never go near them, the smell itself is enough to ward me off, but most Filipinos eat everything and savour this most of all. We dined at Oda for a very local feeling, a cosy restaurant in a back street that feels like you are eating in someone’s living room. The next day, we had lunch at the bright and cheery Era where the mixed starters will give you a great taster of all the local specialities – Fergese (oven baked feta and peppers), Albanian pancakes, grilled vegetables, spinach pie…all very tasty indeed!

Leaving Tirana, we headed into the true insides of Abania… into the hills and mountains in the centre of the country.  Going southeast from Tirana towards Berat (rather than the faster coastal route) you can find a picturesque stop-off about 45 mins from the capital, called Pellumbas, where you’ll find a fledgling adventure tourism spot. Check the Pellumbas Tourism Cluster to get guided walks or tours to the nearby caves.  We were just having a quick stop-off, so we took a hike down to the beautiful river and along its canyon banks – a perfect spot to practice a bit of drone flying!  The road to get there is perfectly passable hence easy to get to.

Berat – the city of a thousand windows.  About 2 hours drive south of Tirana, with decent enough roads even when faced with a sudden thunder storm that turns the roads into a river!  Berat is a centuries old city that gets its description from the many windows of the ottoman style houses that are piled up upon one another on the side of a large craggy hill.  Next to the river Osum and mirrored by yet more windows of Gorices on the other side of the water it’s a unique place to stay and no wonder it is a Unesco world heritage site.

We stayed at Rezidenca Desaret, just to the side of the old town with probably the best views of all thousand windows rising up the hill, the room we had (Rm 210) was the best in the house, huge, well furnished and with it’s own terrace that gave us stunning views of the town; we could have easily just deposited ourselves on this terrace for the whole of our stay, marveling at the view we had.  Nonetheless our itchy feet had us up and about the town exploring: into the winding alleyways of the old town, cobbles everywhere, blissful shade from the sun and some alleyways that you need to pass sideways as they are so narrow; a healthy walk up the ‘hill’ (hill is bit of an understatement but its still not yet a mountain) along the old cobbled street to the Castle area.  The castle is a living village in itself where you will find ruins, places to eat, souvenirs to shop and yet more stunning views of the town beneath.  Do venture to the water cistern at the heart of the castle ruins, Lonely Planet rightly describes at Tolkienesque and you can just imagine the balrog ascending from the depths for a bit of a battle (geek moment!).

Crossing the river over the bouncy pedestrian suspension bridge and you’ll find yourself in the old Christian quarter of the town – Gorices – almost as many/ if not more windows, but (as we found out from a guide) not part of the thousand windows that the town is famed for.  You’ll get more beautiful views, the chance to wander ancient cobbled streets.  A highlight on this side is a sunset dinner at Antigoni, a small terrace for the restaurant gives great views of the old town as well as the panorama  of the snow capped mount Tomorr being lit up with the reds, oranges and purple of sunset.  The food is also very good, and when you are sated you can head up to the higher bar terraces of Antigoni to drink the local raki and take in your own local constellation of Berat by night.

Leaving Berat, our plan was to head further south via the mountain routes – a partly successful idea with some great stops on the way (more on that in a while), but also a bit of a fail when after the Osumi canyon the nice asphalted roads evaporated into tracks that were only passable with a 4×4 or 1980’s Mercedes that were indestructible; despite google maps being confident that these were passable roads and insisting that we should proceed…a scraping sound along the bottom of the car and and a big red warning light on cooling fluid had us turning round for a long detour around the mountains to get to Gjirokaster.

Still, a half day trip into this area up to the end of the road is well worth it as you can visit the waterfalls at Bogove, a 45 min hike up the river from the road (next to the restaurant pit stop of the town), follow the red and white paint marks, take the right for whenever you come across a fork, cross the river multiple times over shaky bridges (a few with no handrails) and along narrow scree slopes until you hit a wall of water cascading into a beautiful crystal clear pool, it was still a bit early in the season for us, but during summer a dip in the water is going to be just perfect!

Handrails?

Lunching at the local restaurant – no English menus, so be adventurous and take a guess at something, you have a high chance of it being tasty.  Then further along to the Osumi river canyon viewing point – just stunning.  There is a super modern viewing platform that extends out over the canyon itself with a vertigo inducing drop into the river below.  The canyon is everything you would want in such a rugged place – steep drops, twisting turns,  and waterfalls cascading into the river below.  It was a Saturday when we visited, but we pretty much had the place to ourselves to spend as long as we wanted flying our drone up and down the canyon.  It was only near the end of our visit that a VIP delegation from Turkey turned up and decided they all wanted a picture with Lyssa.  We only had time enough for a hundred or so pictures, but if we have longer then we are coming back here for a spot of white water rafting and maybe (if I can get Lyssa to agree some canyoning) – check the ‘Visit Skrapar‘ website to see what can be done here.

As I said earlier google made it seem that Gjirokaster was just a short trip over the mountains, fine if you are driving a 4×4, but for our little Skoda it meant backtracking to Berat and then down the perfect quality road and stunning scenery of the E853; the drive was made all the more atmospheric with a massive thunderstorm following along the valley, dark moody clouds and sheets of rain.  We eventually arrived at Gjirokaster quite late, also a Unesco site in itself – a steep drive up cobble stoned streets to reach the upper town.  Usually such towns fill me with awe in having to drive up, super narrow roads and lanes that have me clenching all parts of my body to squeeze us up the way, but Gjirokaster is refreshing in that the upper town plateaus out to some fairly decent sized roads to drive along, if not steep.  We were staying at Hotel Kalemi, a beautifully restored ottoman era guesthouse that had picture perfect views of the rest of the town (and castle). The Superior Double room is beautiful, with a full length window sofa that you can laze about for hours, reading and enjoying the sunny view.  If only we had time to laze about!

Dinner was at the top choice Kujtim, a small place with a green courtyard where you can enjoy dinner under the stars (or into the small cabin restaurant if you have Matt Malas with you and it starts raining!).  We feasted on a mixed platter for two, stuffed vineleaves, peppers, Qifqi (the local specialty of fried rice balls with egg and mint), and naturally washed down with some good local red wine and chased with our drink of the holiday- Raki.

Our last full day in Albania had an action packed, list ticking agenda; we woke early for a hearty breakfast, then up numerous stairs to visit the castle – originally from the 12th century but full built out in the 1800s by Ali Pashar – castles may not be your thing, but we are sure that fantastic views will be!  With the stone clock tower and the backdrop of mountains all around it has quite an alpine feel up at these heights.  Making a quick tour of the bazaar area (more of a nice shopping street than a turkish bazaar you would probably imagine) and then to the other side of town to visit a traditional house – Zakate – where for a couple of euros you get free run to explore every nook and cranny of the house and imagine that you are an ottoman lord surveying all of your lands below!

Back on the road and we headed south, praying for good roads (and getting them) to visit the astounding Blue Eye – a natural spring that bubblesout of the ground to create a pool of colours that looked like they were painted by Monet.  Even though it looked like half of Albania had made a trip along the bumpy road to get here, things are spread out enough that we had our own time and space to enjoy the pool for as long as we wanted.  This is one of the highlights of Albania for us.

Lunch at Saranda to get a feel of the Albanian riviera – many guides will tell you that Saranda is not so pretty, blighted with high rises all along its hills, but compared to other European Mediterranean towns Saranda still has a nice sleepy ‘fishing-village-got-large’ feel to it, and with plenty of restaurants along the seafront to have lunch, it is well worth the stop – sardines, mixed seafood and prawns in garlic are a delicious must!

One last UNESCO stop for us at Butrint – an ancient Greek and Roman city, complete with extensive ruins, a nice amphitheater for us to take a bow on and some impressive mosaics if you are lucky enough to visit in a period when they are uncovered.  Ignore google maps if it tries to tell you you can not drive direct from Saranda… you can!

The remainder of our day was to race the sunshine to visit as many of the beautiful beaches along this coastline as we could.  We have not done this stretch justice and for sure we need to come back and I’m sure we’ll have a whole blog just on that – the defining image of all the beaches is cool azure water, white sand and calm crowds… it was May, so maybe the height of summer is busier, but we doubt it.  Ksamil beach – small and beautiful, probably a busy one for families in peak season; Borsch beach – long and golden; and the secluded Gjipe beach – several kilometres along a single lane track, then drop your car and walk a further 1.5 km down to a picture perfect bay; for those of you that are inclined, you can take your tent down there and share it with a few others who want to fall asleep to the sound of the waves and nothing else.

In hindsight, four days is simply not enough to do this wonderful country justice, we hardly scratched the surface of the beautiful coastline; did the switchback roads of the Llogara pass in the dark (maybe just as well for my nerves) and never even got to the north of the country; but as an initial taster we are hooked and four days is better than no days…so start checking your itineraries and get yourself there.  One possible option that we may do in future is to fly into Corfu and then it is a short ferry ride to Saranda, think it over!

Catching the last boat home…looking forward to coming back!