Albania Week 2!

A Quick Summary

This week, we took a bus down to Vlora, which is a city on the coast of Southern Albania. We spent 4 nights there before taking a bus to Berat, which is further inland. 

Albania map

Highlights

Relaxing in Vlora

Since things are pretty cheap here, Kira and I rented a big apartment for our time in Vlora which was really nice!

We spent 4 nights in Vlora which felt a little bit like a vacation (in the middle of our vacation). The city is super walkable with these massive sidewalks so we spent some time exploring around. 

One day we also rented bikes and explored a bit further up the coast. On another day, I took a minibus to a nearby beach town to explore there as well! Overall, it was a really relaxing time and a nice spot to spend a few nights.

Fresh Fruit

They grow a lot of fruit and vegetables in Albania, so the local fruits are so cheap. We've been eating a lot of nectarines and apples, and one day Kira decided to buy and eat an entire cantaloupe! We've had to stop eating bananas, we are used to that being the "cheap" fruit, but here they are imported from South America so they are one of the more expensive ones.

Berat

Berat is known as the "city of a thousand windows" for this view of all the houses built up on the hill.

We spent a couple days exploring Berat and it was really cool! From a castle up on the hill, to walking around narrow streets and hiking up to have a view of the city, there were lots of neat things to see in this Albanian town. Also, we got super lucky with the weather, when the sun comes out it gets super hot here, but for most of the time it was cloudy and not too bad!

Albanian Busses

After raving last week about how much it feels like a first world country here, there are still some things that are less organized. In particular, the busses here are super difficult to use. There is no centralized bus system, so it seems like anyone with a 15 seater van or an old minibus can decide to make a route. There are also no bus stations, so a lot of the routes have different pickup points. Because of this, there is no schedule posted anywhere, and when you can find anything it's usually wrong. The only way is to find the busses is ask around the locals until someone gives you a WhatsApp contact for a driver, or go to the location of the busses (sometimes marked on google maps) and ask someone there. It definitely took some getting used to! 

Also, the quality of each bus completely depends on whatever vehicle the driver happens to have. We've been in we've really nice, air conditioned sprinter vans, and also some really old vehicles that you can hear the engine struggling on each hill.

A photo collection of the various busses from the past week.

Food Review

Souvlaki Place

Right by our apartment in Vlora there was this amazing shwarma/souvlaki place. In general, everything is super cheap here but this place in particular had really huge portions for cheap! We ate a lot of €2.50 pita wraps and platters.

Raki

The owner of our hostel in Berat also owned a distillery, so he let us try a lot of free drinks he had made. We got to try some raki, which is a Mediterranean/Balkan alcohol that can be distilled from a number of different fruits. He had a bunch of different flavors from cinnamon to orange to strawberry, and it was pretty good (although it burned a little). 

Extra Photos

Orikum, a small town I took a bus to near Vlora