Welcome to our last post in Albania. What a trip it's been!
We left lovely Himare and headed north. Huge, rolling hills rose up beside the coastal road.
We took the long route so we could cross the Llogara Pass. The road up the mountain switched back and forth as it climbed. You can see the edges of it on the hill in this photo.
The scenery on the way up was amazing.
Near the top was a viewpoint so we parked and had a look. While we were looking, a semi-trailer pulled up in front of our car, on the road, blocking the left lane of traffic and blocking us in. The driver got out and casually strolled over to look at the view. Our car was behind the van on the left. We had to negotiate our way between the van and the truck, go around the back of the truck, then charge across the crest of the hill before another car came. And nobody raised an eyebrow!
The view was amazing though!
I really wanted to see at least one of the great ancient ruined cities and, as we hadn't been able to see Butrint in the south, we went to Apollonia instead. The roads here had recently been changed and we went on a merry goose-chase for a while trying to find our way in. We got there eventually then watched other people doing the same thing!
The ancient city spreads over an astonishing 81 hectares. It's estimated that they've only uncovered about 10% of what's there so far. The area had clearly been used for farming in the last century as we wandered through a beautiful old olive grove with wildflowers running amok in the prettiest of ways.
Apollonia was founded at the beginning of the 7th century BC. A museum showed some of the items that had been found there. There was an old shield that had been found in hundreds of pieces. It took 27 years to put it back together! There were many pretty clay pots.
It always amazes me how anyone can create soft, flowing forms from marble.
I think this woman was having a bad hair day!
Like so many ancient towns, there are layers of settlements. This church only dates from the 13th century and was partly built using materials taken from the more ancient city around it.
The front of the Bouleuterion, the place where council meetings used to be held in the 2nd century AD. 160 people could sit inside.
Not a good photo of an old theatre. Incredibly, this theatre had a roof and was completely enclosed.
A shepherd wandered through the site with his sheep. Only in Albania!
Disappointingly, there wasn't much else to see, apart from a few communist storage bunkers where the ancient acropolis had previously sat.
We drove on to our next destination - an ancient town called Berat (or Berati). Incredibly, we had found an apartment inside the old castle that perched on the hill above the town! We had learned from our previous experience in old towns and we asked that the owners meet us outside the castle and guide us in. It was a good move. Following them, we passed through several arched gateways then bumped down lovely cobblestoned roads.
The apartment was amazing! It was in an old Ottoman-era house. The building was shared between the family, their cousins in the middle section and us in the apartment at the end. The family had lived inside the castle for six generations! Each family had their own house within the building.
Our front door had this classic locking system on the inside.
Our little balcony on the right. The wooden section on the left juts out Ottoman-style and made up part of our small kitchen.
Downstairs was our bathroom. The inside was nothing special but the outside was very special!
Weirdly, the table and chairs they provided on the balcony were all cut down to child height! We have no idea why.
This pomegranate tree grew next to us. Pomegranates are everywhere but we don't get them very often in meals.
It seemed strange to have a living, breathing community inside a castle but it was really just like living in an old town but on top of a hill. There were plenty of gorgeous old doors.
We had to walk all the way down the hill to the town below to top up the sim card in my phone. There are three UNESCO-listed areas here - the castle, Mangalemi (the area beneath the castle) and Gorica (the suburb across the river). Mangalemi was all whitewashed buildings and slate rooves.
It looked even more enticing after dark.
Across the river, Gorica added its lights to the scene.
We bought groceries in the new town and slogged back up the hill on a rough track in the dark, however a full moon came out in time to show us the way!
We watched a stunning sunrise from our apartment one morning.
Morning glow on the terracotta rooftops under our window.
In order to beat the crowds, we got up early to explore the castle. It turned out to not be too busy anyway, but we got to see most of it all by ourselves.
Gorica from above.
Ruins of the Red Mosque. It's some hundreds of years old but was badly damaged by German bombs in WW2.
A highlight was the ancient cistern that stood near the top of the hill. It was huge with gorgeous vaulted ceilings. Anyone could just wander in through a crumbling series of steps near the top. There were no safety rails or anything. The water inside was stagnant and plastic water bottles floated on top but these couldn't take away from the mystery and beauty of the place.
So cool!
The Holy Trinity church built in the 13th century.
I love the way the old Ottoman houses lean in over the narrow cobblestoned lanes.
Castle walls.
I wanted to see the frescoes inside a particular church but it was closed. I stumbled across another church that was open though. To my amazement, it was far better than the one I'd been looking for. Frescoes covered every inch of the interior. A simple mosaic decorated the floor.
We ate dinner at a restaurant, again on the castle walls. We watched the moon rise while we ate. It was lovely!
Sadly, our Albanian trip was almost over. It was time to go to Tirana, the capital, and return our hire car. We successfully navigated our way out of the castle and drove to Tirana. On the way we passed beautiful agricultural land. We saw people harvesting acres of lucerne with scythes! We also saw a woman herding her geese with a stick. She was a classic!
We drove through one town where every public skip bin was overflowing with rubbish. It's so sad that this is still not uncommon.
Finally we arrived in Tirana. It was a shock to see high-rise apartments after a month in mostly rural areas and smaller towns.
By far the biggest shock though was the traffic. It was crazy! I should explain first about the driving in Albania in general. Everywhere we went was the same. People turned without using blinkers. Lanes are a guide only. If anyone wants to drop into a shop they just double-park while they have a chat and pick up their goods. Meanwhile, other drivers have to negotiate their way around the car that's sitting on the road. People open their doors to get out of the car without looking. Then they pull into the traffic without looking and without indicating. Basically, there are few rules that are adhered to. This might explain the high accident rate in Albania.
Warriors, intellectuals and workers gather around Mother Albania in this mosaic.
This was all quite entertaining and amusing in the rest of Albania, however we hit Tirana and all this lack of rules created chaos in a city of half a million people. There were many roundabouts that were three lanes wide and people were going in all directions from all lanes. It was awful.
We had arranged to drop our rental car off at a specific location. (We had picked it up in Shkodra, a different town). We picked a place that was fairly easy to get to, however when we went to make the final turn into the car park, the road was blocked by roadworks. I tried to find alternative routes but they kept leading to dead ends. We had to turn around in narrow lanes and squeeze past parked cars. In the end it took us just under an hour to return to the same spot but from a different direction so we could enter the car park.
A car blocked most of the drive into the car park (of course!) so I jumped out to see if we could get past it. I checked, then turned around to tell John that it was ok only to see a double-length bendy bus squeezing past him! We both held our breath as it slowly went past and thankfully didn't scratch the car. I would hate to have got this far then damage the car in the last 20 metres!
We had lunch at a restaurant there, left the car for the rental company to pick up and caught a taxi to our accommodation. Funnily, I showed the taxi driver where our accommodation was on google maps on my phone so he just put my phone up into his phone stand and off we went! The traffic got worse and worse until we simply weren't moving. Our taxi driver would toot angrily at cars in front of him that couldn't move then would put his hands over his ears and complain when other people tooted! He squeezed into places that I wouldn't have thought any vehicle could get into. Meanwhile, electric scooters and Uber Eats-type delivery drivers on motorbikes zipped between vehicles with centimetres to spare. It was all so stressful.
Finally, when we were about 400 metres from our destination we got out of the taxi and walked. It was so much quicker! Thank goodness the apartment was lovely.
I was starting to wish we hadn't come to Tirana at all, however we went out to buy a few things and ended up joking around with a shop assistant. We went out for an Italian dinner, which was delicious, and fell in love with a painting on a wall. The waiter then took us upstairs, which wasn't open, to show us all the other prints they had. Maybe Tirana wasn't so bad after all!
The next day we explored a few areas. Skanderbeg Square is named after Albania's national hero. Skanderbeg effectively brought all the Albanian clans together to fight the Ottomans in 1444.
For the first time in Albania, I found a mosque that I could visit. Most mosques are only open at prayer time. Visitors are welcome to visit but I always feel that I shouldn't as there are separate areas, even separate mosques sometimes, for men and women and I'm afraid I'll do something wrong and offend someone.
The beautiful old Mosque of Et'hem Bey is the opposite - anyone can visit outside of prayer times. They were well used to tourists here - men walked in with shorts in and I didn't have to cover my hair. Built in the 18th century, the mosque was saved from destruction in the communist years as it had been classified as a Cultural Monument.
The paintings inside had been fully restored.
Most older buildings in Tirana have been lost in the rapid modernisation that has happened in the last decade or two. A few lucky ones struggle to maintain their space among the towering buildings.
In the year 2,000, an artist became the mayor of Tirana. The result was many brightly coloured buildings!
Under a strange pyramid-shaped building was a super-colourful IT college.
We climbed to the top of the pyramid for great views over the city.
We found a massive park and had a great walk around here. It was like being in the mountains and was getting well-used by locals on a Saturday.
Giant poppy sculptures.
I've never seen a double-decker merry-go-round before!
On our last night we went to a very fancy steak restaurant where John had a choice of aged steaks from all over the world, including Australia! Afterwards we went to a very cool jazz bar where they screened movies on the old wall of a building across the lane (with subtitles and no sound). Instead of the usual nuts or similar that are often served with drinks, they served a few squares of dark chocolate! It was perfect with John's rum and my Cointreau.
We walked back through the huge Skanderbeg Square.
We could see that a start/finish line for a fun run and marathon had been set up in the square. The next morning, we went for a walk and realised that the run was happening that morning. The roads all through the city centre were blocked off and policemen lined the streets. This was all well and good but the taxi stand that we had lined up to catch a taxi to the airport that morning was now closed off to traffic. How were we going to get a taxi if the roads were all blocked? Leaving earlier than we originally planned, we started walking with our bags. It wasn't long before we found a taxi on a side street, however there was nobody in it. Having some idea how Albania works by now, we checked the nearby cafe but the driver wasn't there. Someone made it clear that this taxi wasn't operating today. Then, in true Albanian style, not one but two people tried to help us. Within minutes somebody found someone that had a "private taxi" (read "car"). For a very fair price this guy went somewhere nearby to get his car, returned to pick us up and took us to the airport on a fairly traffic-free Sunday morning. He was absolutely lovely. You've got to love a country where things like this happen. It was a great way to finish our Albanian adventure.
The word 'adventure' is a very accurate description. We often felt like we were venturing into the unknown. There is definitely an Indian Jones-type feeling here. It's still a largely undiscovered country although this is changing quickly.
The variety of natural features was incredible. We climbed stunning mountains, explored caves, ate wild fruits, smelled wild herbs, drank from mountain streams, saw wildflowers, scrambled up gorges and swam in the clear blue sea.
The landscapes were simply stunning. Mountain ranges soared around us at Thethi and we didn't need to be mountaineers to be right amongst them. Visiting the ancient cities of Gjirokastro and Berati were like living in history. Being able to stay in houses that were part of the fabric of these old cities was a privilege. Old stone villages in rural areas were home to people who held strong to their traditions. They were largely self-sufficient, growing their own vegetables and making their own cheese. Donkeys and horses were still used as beasts of burden, just like they have been for centuries. The coastline kept surprising us with gorgeous bays bathed in sunshine and green mountains rose up behind it.
The food was wonderful. Largely vegetable and dairy-based, meals were tasty and hearty, although we had salt overdoses a few times. Salads were fresh and interesting and bread came with every meal. I'd hate to think how much weight we've put on!
The people were so friendly and genuinely interested in us, particularly when they realised we were from Australia. People were quick to catch on to a joke and tried hard to communicate with us even though the language barrier was a big stumbling block at times. Old men would answer and nod or even bow a bit to a "hello" in Albanian. Old ladies would give us fruit and many people wanted to know what we thought of their country. It always amazes me to think that these wonderful people have lived through such terrible times.
For a country with such a chequered past, it has come a long way. The rubbish issue is a big problem but hopefully that will get sorted, although I can't see it happening in a hurry. Modernisation is perhaps happening too fast and not enough importance is being placed on historical buildings or preserving landscapes but what other country can't say it hasn't done the same thing at some stage? I just hope that the government gets a lot more right than it gets wrong.
If these posts have piqued your interest, should you visit Albania? Absolutely - and don't leave it too long. Would be go back? Yep, certainly.
Thanks for following along. I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of what this amazing country has to offer.
Heather and John
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