Jun 2, 2019 - last morning in tirana

Whilst in France, cultural institutions seem to closed on Mondays (Sauf Lundi),for Albania, Sunday seems to be the preferred weekly closing day, which I discovered by chance today when procrastinating about visiting the Mosaic of Tirana. Fortunately for me, this small tourist attraction is just around the corner from the apartment I have been staying at, and in fact I used it to orient myself for Google maps as it's the closest site; but I had put off actually venturing inside the fences until now. Sipping my coffee from a cafe next to the...

Jun 1, 2019 - minimal duress in Durres or more than beaches and bunkers

Having exhausted the 'must sees' of Tirana, travel writers suggest getting out of town on one of many day trips to other Albanian towns and cities, such as Berat to see pretty houses or Shkodra for the photography museum, or the coastal Durres. Whilst renowned primarily as a port city, Durres in Albania offers more than beaches. My initial reason for wanting to visit Durres was mainly to discover some of the 750,000 bunkers that are supposedly littered across this relatively small country rather than exploring the beach. Actually finding...

May 27, 2019 - Albania

Albania has always been this mysterious communist country that no-one I know had been to. We knew nothing much about it and even had to look up it’s capital (Tirana). We’ve filled in quite a few gaps after a very full couple of days and evenings here. And a lot of information from tour guides.....read information overload. I’ve been keeping notes as they talk because I just can’t recall it all. For the record Albania is a country of 28,000 sq kms of mostly mountains (70%) and has a long, fertile coast. There are nearly 3 million people, 1m...

Oct 4, 2018 - Tirana

After breakfast we headed to Tirana, the capital of Albania, with an excursion to Berat. Berat is on the Osum River and is known for its white Ottoman house. There is a castle high on a hill and is a living castle with some of the towns people living within its walls. There is a Byzantine church, the Red Mosque, and a restaurant where we had lunch. We spent the night in Tirana and after breakfast we had a lecture on the history of Albania in a quaint little restaurant that specialized in herbs and mushrooms. We then visited the national...

Oct 2, 2018 - Gjirokaster

Today we made it to Albania. We stopped at Ksamil on the Adriatic Sea and had lunch at a beautiful beachside restaurant before visiting Butrint. Butrint was a Greek colony, a Roman city, and a bishopric of the Byzantine Empire. This city was built on a peninsula with a wall on all sides. It looks like it would have been a nice place to live. We then headed north along the coast to Gjirokaster and had dinner at a local restaurant after checking into our hotel. The next morning we walked up the hill, through the old town over cobblestones to...

Aug 9, 2018 - 30th July

Dear all, Well still in catch up mode. On Monday, 30th we moved on from Macedona crossing into Albania, the poorest and slowest country to recover. The land is still dotted with the underground bunkers. In Tirana they have dug out around one and found several rooms on two or three levels that the have now turned into a museum. The new or renovated buildings in the city and peoples homes are often painted with bright colours in contrast with the drab cement buildings and apartment buildings left over from the communist rule. The hotels we...

Jul 2, 2018 - Tirana

Unlike yesterday's drive to Berat the drive to Tirana was absolutely boring by comparison and therefore quite relaxing. The landscape was not all that interesting but passing through large fields of sunflowers certainly provided plenty of colour. We deliberately spent the final night of our 'lower Balkans & Greece' travels in a hotel near the airport rather than in the city to keep things simple for our flight connection the next morning. Great plan, shame it did not quite work out. Hotel breakfast and checkout …. tasty and easy. GPS...

Jul 1, 2018 - Berat

Yuk! …. what a terrible drive. It was fine until a few k's into Albania where the good road turned to a goat track and everyone seemed determined to avoid the slightest surface imperfection.....really an impossible task. Weather-wise it was near perfect but it was a great relief to reach Berat for our overnighter which was in a really comfy 'guest house' in the old town. Although not exactly easy to find because of road works we finally made it and all was good. Shopping was again on the menu but at least after a nice meal in the pedestrian...

Jul 1, 2018 - Tirana

Leaving Tirana was not the easiest due to questionable GPS directions and terrible road conditions but we made the airport on time. Returning “Slim” Duster our faithful rental 4WD was a breeze so coffees were ordered to help pass the time until check-in

Jun 9, 2018 - Tirana

The drive from Montenegro back into Albania was simple enough but the border crossing was one of the slowest yet. We had criss-crossed borders so many times we wondered if they thought we were up to no good and gave us an extra going over. With time in hand we made a visit to Tirana's Harley Davidson outlet but soon wished we hadn't. The overall presentation was terrible. Older model bikes, many covered in dust did not really appeal to us so we moved on to reach our accomodation for the next few days. If that hadn't been exciting enough...

Jun 5, 2018 - Shkoder

Our new stop now became Shkoder nestled on the edge of a huge lake. Not a pretty town, in fact quite untidy, but our hotel was great and we were relieved. There definitely was no relief when driving in that town as everywhere you moved there would be dozens of bicycles in your path. They roamed and ruled just like cows did on outer roads. Across the river things were better where eateries provided a degree of respite and decorum. The river was quite broad and pretty but had weird, decaying, concrete structures jutting into it. An...

May 13, 2018 - Korce

We had three options to get to Korce for our overnight stop but after re-living the GPS debacle a few days back where we were drawn onto seriously dangerous roads we decided on the longer route. As well we did for although it was a great road it did have a few safety issues so we could only imagine how bad the other options would have been. We were happy with our choice. We enjoyed an interesting trip through a number of villages along the Albanian side of Lake Ohrid although winding our way through people, vehicles and animals at a street...