our Tirana International Hotel & Conference Center room
Putting together this Balkan trip: Photos of picturesque Ohrid, North Macedonia, nestled on a gorgeous mountain lake caught my eye and inspired this trip. (This tends to happen to me. I see a photo or read something online or a place mentioned in a book, do a little research, and the next thing I know I’m going there.) July and August are peak season in certain parts of the Balkans, but temperatures can be really hot. So, I wasn’t sure my plan to check out Ohrid in July was my most genius move. Lake Ohrid’s waters are cool and lots of people head to the lake in the summer months, but of course, I wanted to explore the region a little, too. What cities might we fly into or visit before or after our time in Ohrid? Options for direct flights from our home in Paris were limited (“Paris Beauvais” doesn’t count as it’s not really in Paris and a real hassle to get to from the city). Transavia offers direct flights from Paris Orly to Tirana, Albania, a 2.5 hour drive from Ohrid. I looked at some open-jaw itineraries with us flying out of Ohrid or Skopje, North Macedonia, but those required lay-overs that didn’t interest me, so a round-trip to Tirana made the most sense. David and I had been in Shkoder, Albania, a few years back on a short side trip from Montenegro. While we’d enjoyed good food and the picturesque ruins of Rosafa Castle, we were interested in seeing more of Albania. Its capital, Tirana, seemed the perfect place to start.
Searching the weather forecast showed temperatures rising into the 90’s in Tirana in July during the period we were free (and avoiding the upcoming anticipated Olympics travel snarl in Paris when we plan to stay put). Oh well, that sounded like my native Texas. Not ideal, but we could work with that. I quickly put together an 8-night trip with multi-night stops in Tirana, Ohrid and Skopje. I opted for private drivers between cities so we could visit intriguing places along the way including Tetovo and Matka Canyon in North Macedonia and Prizren, Kosovo, and the surrounding mountains. Adding Kosovo provided a fun bonus of putting me over 100 countries visited. A meaningless personal milestone, but I got a kick out of it anyway. (And, while the US and many other countries recognize Kosovo as an independent country, Serbia would no doubt disagree. So maybe it’s “100*” with an asterisk for Serbia and its ilk.)
Our time in Tirana: We stayed only one night upon our arrival, at the Tirana International Hotel and Conference Center on the city’s vast Skanderbeg Square. Our 2.5 hour Transavia flight from Orly arrived early in the morning, though, and we had a full day to explore the sights before heading to Ohrid the next morning. We also had two nights at the end of our trip a mile further south at the MAK Albania Hotel just off Mother Theresa Square in the upscale Blloku area of the city which borders a large wooded city park. This turned out to be a great way to experience two areas of Tirana and to let us enjoy MAK Hotel’s gorgeous pool facilities when the temperature in Tirana would be hottest. There aren’t a huge number of must-sees in Tirana and we easily saw all I hoped to during our time in the city.
Skanderbeg Square is the heart of the city and we headed out to explore it as soon as we dropped of luggage at the hotel. Tall buildings surround the square and offer an intriguing array of modern architecture. Tirana appears to be undergoing a building boom and cranes dot the skyline.
At the time of our visit, Skanderbeg Square was filled with bleacher stands surrounding a large swath of “Astroturf” on which white beanbag chairs were scattered, all of which faced a huge screen set up to broadcast the ongoing Euro 2024 soccer games. [See lead photo above.] Booths set up around all this and near a big ferris wheel offered snacks and local beer. People sipping cold drinks in the shade in open-air cafes along the opera side of the square enticed us to join them. Iced coffees and an excellent late breakfast of avocado toast on fresh seedy bread at Momento started the day off well. We liked Momento so much that we returned a couple of times and, when we came back on one of the last days of our Balkans trip, the manager gifted David with a special beer glass with the bird logo of local Sabaja craft beer.
A first stop was the BunkArt 2 Museum. BunkArt 2 is located in one of 173,000 nuclear bunkers created during the decades-long dictatorship of Albania’s Enver Hoxha. BunkArt 2’s grid of underground tunnels and rooms extends much further than we expected from its modest entrance. We spent a good bit of time exploring rooms ranging from cells to command centers to photography and art installations reflecting the dark years of Albanian dictatorship. Citizens were tightly controlled and forbidden to leave Albania; foreigners were not welcome and the outside world kept at a distance. Chilling photographs and exhibits of razor-wired mountain border fences and attack dogs and their trainers paid testament to the many Albanians who died trying to escape.
We enjoyed the beautiful little Et’hem Bej Mosque just off Skanderbeg Square with its colorful painted walls and ceilings. I brought my own headscarf, but skirt wraps and scarves are available to borrow. Entrance is free, but a donation is expected. Religion was prohibited during the dictatorship and most churches and mosques were destroyed. The Et’hem Bej Mosque was declared a historic monument during the dictatorship. But in January 1991, thousands of people entered the mosque carrying flags and heralding the beginning of the end of Communism in Albania.
For a little religious diversity, we visited the Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral, a massive modern structure a short distance from the side of Skanderbeg Square opposite the Et’hem Bej Mosque. Albania is majority Muslim, but has a sizeable Christian minority and a secular government.
Tirana Castle, while preserving some of the old fortress walls, is a modern area of shops and restaurants. There’s nothing particularly historic about the place now, but it’s fun and it really comes alive on summer nights with live music at cafés, their outdoor tables full.
Downtown Tirana bustles on summer nights. People who’d taken refuge indoors during the summer heat seem to pour out onto the cooling streets. Couples, families and clusters of friends strolled the squares and parks, took photos around the Tirana Pyramid, bought treats from street vendors, and watched soccer on outdoor screens. In Blloku, cafés around the modern stadium filled as the night progressed.
We found the fresh seafood at Fiore Restaurant in Blloku to be excellent, enjoying it so much we ate there two nights in a row, ordering the same mixed platter for David and grilled baby squid for me. Piping hot seasoned pizza bread, a shared enormous Fiore Salad, good wine and a complimentary platter piled high with watermelon wedges rounded out the meal. Friendly service, good air conditioning and a steady supply of ice to satisfy our American tastes made for a lovely time.
Practical info:
Although I link directly to hotels when I blog, that’s just for informational purposes. I usually book through a cashback portal, my favorite being Topcashback. That’s what I did on all of our Balkan hotels, using Booking.com via Topcashback. (I don’t always use Booking.com; Topcashback links to many travel sites and I compare cashback offers and prices before I choose. This time, Booking.com had the best deals.) Over the years, I’ve gotten over $2500 from Topcashback for travel and items that I would have bought anyway. The link here to Topcashback is to my referral link, so many thanks to anyone who uses it.
Tirana Intercontinental Hotel & Conference Center boasts a great location on Skanderbeg Square and lovely common areas, but the rooms are dated and the air conditioning struggled although it was good enough by bedtime and we slept well. It was cheap and an excellent value at €66.18/night. I chose it for our one-night stay for the location, the price, and because I thought any taxi driver would know where to find it. I wasn’t sure about language issues with a cab and didn’t want some tucked-away Airbnb or small guest house as our first, early morning stop.
MAK Albania Hotel is elegant and substantially more expensive that the Tirana Intercontinental Hotel & Conference Center, but did include an excellent breakfast. It is undergoing massive rennovation and additions which have almost the whole hotel swathed in scaffolding. I knew this in advance and did call to verify we’d have a quiet room and that the pool would be open. I’d read reviews saying that the hotel has been known to close the pool to guests for private functions, so if–like me–you want a swimming pool, it might be good to verify they have nothing booked. Perhaps because I’d called or maybe just because they weren’t full and they’re aware that the construction might be off-putting, we were upgraded on check-in to an enormous suite on a club floor with no scaffolding in front of our window and which faced the wooded park and a bit of the pool and grounds. As it was a weekend, there was no construction going on when we were there. Very nice!
July 2024