albania Archives - Wanderwiles

Beginning and Ending a Balkan Getaway in Tirana, Albania

Skanderbeg Square (set up for Euro 2024) viewed from
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.

Nighttime Tirana from top left, clockwise: Around Tirana Castle, Tirana Pyramid, Blloku, Mother Theresa Square, live music in front of The Cloud art installation

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

Daytrip to Albania

20160409_151022 — Wildflowers and goats in Rosafa Castle grounds in Shkodër, Albania

I think nearly every traveler feels the urge of The Place Just Beyond. I try not to succumb to the temptation to waste my time in Place A running over to Place B, just because it’s further or–my personal peeve–just to “say” you’ve been there. I always wonder who exactly I’m supposed to “say” that to, and who the heck would care. Still, I can be as weak as the next person and ever since we’d planned this trip to Montenegro and I’d realized how close Albania was, I’d been tempted to make a dreaded “toe touch” run. I know, I know: Shame on me!

But wait, hear me out: I did have some rational reasons for going to Albania for the day beyond curiosity, which IMHO, is a perfectly good reason for most travel. First…well, first, there was curiosity. I’d started reading about Albania and I wanted to see for myself if the difference between Albania and Montenegro would really be as noticeable as some people claimed. Albania sounded like kind of a mess, and maybe a little bit dangerous, but also beautiful and remote, and Muslim, unlike the other Balkan countries we’d seen and would see on this trip and…Like I said, I was curious. Secondly, weather was now making this trip look more appealing. It had been cloudy and threatening rain since we arrived in Montenegro and the forecast for our second day there was calling for heavy rains. The rains were coming from Africa to the south and looked to push through Kotor by the following day. So, I reasoned, it might be a gamble worth taking to try to drive through the rains. Maybe, just maybe, we would luck out and end up in Albania with a little sunshine. David was game, so I emailed our AirBnB host, Bojan.

Months ago when I booked our apartment, Bojan had said he could arrange any tours, rent cars, etc. we might have in mind and reviews on AirBnB gave him high marks. He was a little surprised when I said I wanted to go to Rosafa Castle in Shkodër, Albania, in the pouring rain, but he said he’d make some calls. We decided we wanted a driver for this excursion since I’d read of problems at the border and thought a local who could speak the language would be a help. We also had some concerns that migrants moving through from Syria might also create complications at the border. Bojan got back to me promptly saying he’d found a driver who would take us for €150, and that others he’d asked were €250 to €300. A little worryingly, he did not answer my question about whether the driver spoke English nor how we’d recognize him, only assuring me that the driver would be downstairs at 10am the following morning. Oh well, we’d have an adventure!

Sure enough, promptly at 10am we spotted a large new car parked below our balcony by the canal. Suited up and with umbrellas at the ready, we dashed through the pouring rain and hopped in the stranger’s vehicle. Our driver, Goran, turned out to be a charming young man who spoke very good English. He was the married father of a little girl about whom he loved to talk. Goran was a native of Kotor and son of a prosperous local businessman. He was a font of knowledge and local perspective and a fun companion on what would turn out to be a longer day than any of us had anticipated.

Despite the rain, we made decent time along the coast past the town of Budva where the old town looked pretty in the distance. The rest of the city seemed an uncharming sprawl to me, though, and I was glad we’d chosen pretty little Kotor as our base. Goran assured me he felt the same way and said Budva had become a party town for tourists. Not what I’m looking for, but to each their own.

20160409_111727 — Sveti Stefan, Montenegro, just beyond Budva

Water rushed over the road in Budva and other spots along the way, but Goran had no problem getting through and soon we were leaving the coast and driving up into the mountains. Our plan was to take the highway through Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, and continue on to the new border crossing point north of huge Lake Shkodër. We’d gone only about 30 minutes, however, when we came to a line of cars backed up behind work trucks and heavy machinery. After we’d sat for 10 minutes or so, Goran got out to talk to people ahead and came back with news that there had been a rock slide and we’d need to retrace our steps back to the coast and continue on to Albania that way to cross the border at the small, rural checkpoint south of the lake. A delay, but not a threat to our outing.

When we arrived at the border, it turned out to be unremarkable in appearance and not nearly as bad as the impression we’d got from Goran. Goran had a low opinion of all things Albanian and had warned us to expect Albanians to yell at us because “they always yell.” He claimed Albanians were the worst drivers in the world and we should keep an eye on them because they’d try to cheat us and they weren’t friendly. Frankly, I’d read some similar posts along with advice not to drive a rent car into Albania because car thieves were rampant. Hmm. I don’t know about all that and certainly had no experiences along that line. No one yelled at us, but it did take a long time to cross the border. (We discovered that Goran spoke no Albanian, so he wasn’t much help there although his familiarity with the process and local car and driver’s license no doubt made things more routine. In any event, details weren’t our problem and that was nice.). The worst part about the delay was that the break in the rain we’d had as we approached the checkpoint gave way as we waited to cross. It seemed to rain harder with each passing minute. It looked like our gamble might be a big failure.

20160409_123259 — Montenegro/Albania border south of Lake Shkodër

20160409_121710 — Goran at the helm in rural Albania

We arrived in the city of Shkodër in a heavy downpour, Rosafa Castle visible across the river. Goran asked if we wanted to go straight there, but since it was lunchtime, I suggested we eat first in one last bid for better weather. Having come this far, we were willing to explore the castle ruins in the rain, but we had to eat sometime, so why not now?

We chose a riverside restaurant at random and ran for the door in the deluge, umbrellas up and dodging puddles. The restaurant, Vellezerit Vataksi, turned out to be a delightful refuge. The food was good, the atmosphere lovely, prices wonderfully cheap, and the waiter–despite Goran’s misgivings–was courteous. He spoke a little English, so that turned out to be the common language for ordering. We lunched on fish soup, grilled shrimp (large and excellently prepared, large portion, shell-on), grilled sea bream with tomato sauce, and shrimp risotto (with small, bay-style shrimp). The huge window by our table overlooked a riverside terrace and the castle on a hill beyond the far bank. Miracle of miracles, the rain gave way as we ate and visited with Goran. By the time we left, the sun was shining!

20160409_143902 — Our Albanian refuge in a storm

20160409_135529AlbaniaRestaurantRet — Goran and David

20160409_143137 — After the rain: view of Rosafa Castle from the restaurant Vellezerit Vataksi

Rosafa Castle was only a short, 5-minute or so drive from the restaurant. Goran opted to wait with the car–still wary of thieves and reckless drivers, so David and I walked up the rest of the way up the castle’s hill via a cobblestone pedestrian road. We paid a modest fee to a man perched at the entrance and made our way through the dark castle gate that enticed with a glimpse of blue sky and wildflowers beyond.

20160409_145743 — Entrance to Rosafa Castle

I’d chosen Rosafa Castle as our destination pretty randomly. Shkodër was the nearest Albanian city, the castle was one of its big tourist draws and our kind of thing; that was pretty much it. It turned out to be a great choice. The weather had turned nice–partly sunny and comfortably warm. The rocky terrain quickly absorbed the previous rainfall yet left everything fresh and clean with the smell of wildflowers permeating the air. We had a wonderful ramble through ruins that sprawled across the hilltop with only a few other local visitors, a goatherd and some goats. There’s a tiny military museum in the back keep. The ticket taker kindly let us peek in and told us there was no English. Not at all tempted, we opted to continue our time enjoying the beautiful day outside and the 360° views of Shkodër and surrounding valley. Had the nearby open air café been open yet for the season, we might have been more enticed by that.

20160409_151704 — Ruins and wildflowers as Rosafa Castle

20160409_145922

20160409_154710 — Mosque in the valley below Rosafa Castle

20160409_151818 — View towards town and Lake Shkodër from the castle

After we finished exploring the castle, Goran drove us into downtown Shkodër. We only had time for a quick view and then we were on our way back to Montenegro. This time, we drove north of the lake, crossed the border at the newly expanded checkpoint and headed on to Podgorica. Goran offered to stop to let us explore, but we declined. We were tired, already way behind schedule, and Goran had to drive us to Kotor, then turn around and come back to Podgorica to pick up his daughter. Roads all over Montenegro were torn up with repairs in a mad rush to be ready for the upcoming tourist season. We expected delays getting back to Kotor–we were right–and Goran was going to have to do it twice. We felt bad for his long day, but he was cheerful and matter-of-fact about it.