Europe | Albania

★ Week Seventeen Itinerary:

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Shkodër, Albania

Podgorica 🚌 Shkodër

Shkodër, Albania | November 7th – 9th

Albania is a country that prior to arriving in Europe I embarrassingly couldn’t have pointed to on a map and definitely had no idea why tourists travelled to. After chatting with friends, travellers and complete randoms N.D and I quickly discovered the numerous fun, adventurous and cheap activities this Eastern European gem had to offer.

Our visit to Shkodër was intended to provide a starting point to complete a popular hike in the northern region (Valbona to Theth). Unfortunately due to snow, seasonal changes and limited accessibility our arrival to the region timed perfectly with the hikes closure and instead we had to entertain ourselves within the city. So… that meant a lot of coffee drinking, food tasting and goat spotting. 🙂

While our stay in the city wasn’t part of the plan and I may have sulked about missing out on the hike for longer than I care to admit, it did remind me of an important lesson in being flexible to change.

And now we have a great excuse to come back to Albania in the summer complete the hike, explore more of the southern aspect of the country and venture into the greater Balkan region! Well after I’ve travelled to 50+ other countries on my ‘to trot’ list. 🙂

The snow in the north bought with it a much cooler temperature and with that a sad realisation that we were no longer in the European summer we started in. Might have to partake in some more indoor activities? Or continue our numerous exploratory trotting adventures but while wearing everything we bought. 😛

Tirana, Albania

Shkodër 🚌 Tirana

Tirana, Albania | November 9th – 14th

The Tirana bus stop. Quite the haven for commotion, yelling, intense bargaining, excessive horn usage and confusion… especially if you’re a tourist. When we arrived at the stop (station seems to functional of a word for this outside monstrosity of chaos) little did N.D and I know that we would be visiting this site multiple times over the next five days for all matter of day trips, missed buses and more confusion.

The day trips all involved a early morning hourish walk to the bus depot, confusion about cost or when to pay and if we were even on the correct bus. Once their the cheap coffee houses always called our name and we found ourselves trotting the streets caffeinated to the brim just waiting for our next coffee or meal stop. Gotta love the affordability of Albania.

We tried all forms of local cuisine from street side vendors, fast-food restaurants and fine dining. Even ate Mexican, Italian and Japanese style food. My favourite was the hotpot stews while N.D really liked the stuffed eggplants.

While staying in Tirana we decided to do something very unusual to our trip so far but very common with most tourists. We went to all usual attractions. 🙂 Our capital quests I might even call it.

Some of the sites we visited included:

• Bunk’art; if you do any tourist attraction in Albania make it this!!! Built for the paranoid dictator Enver Hoxha this massive bunker was constructed on the outskirts of Tirana to accomodate Enver and his companions, while he commissioned a further 221,000 smaller bunkers to be built around Albania for the locals safety.
• Cable Car ‘Dajti Ekspres’ and climbing Dajti Mountain. Incredible views were on offer when N.D and I climbed up this mountain including a wee self-timed photoshoot that one of us loved.
• Dajti mini-golf; first 18 hole mini-golf course in Albania. You can guess who won verses who got the most hole in ones! 😛

Before we knew it we were catching our final bus from Tirana and headed to the international airport for the last leg of our trip… next stop Western Europe.