Hotel Brilant Antik Tirana

Kruja was a short day trip out of Tirana. <br><br>There is a well preserved fortress that has now been converted into a museum on Albania history of Skanderberg - a prominent Albania figure in 14th century who lead ...

... says that busses would be waiting to take us to the Albanian capital of Tirana. Nope. Our bus driver gives us a rough indication in the form of a wave. There are two backpackers on the bus, Juliana and Christina, both Germans travelling for a month. We decide to hang together and figure this all out. We stop by the only ATM we see and our cards don't work. So, to make matters worse, we don&#8217;t have any Albanian currency. <br><br>We walk to some busses but these are not the ...

... apples, I chose the latter, deciding it'd be enough. I would've had cheese too, but the cheese I bought turned out to be butter. That's different. So rather than violate my restrictions against traveling with butter I butter up an entire baguette in preparation for the trip. Fortunately it lasts me the entire day traveling, but with little variety while in Tirana itself, mostly 'byreks', the local version of Mediterranean oily pies. They're ...

... doesn't apply to the majority of the Albanians......... after years of paranoid communist rule that amongst other things left around 70.000 bunkers throughout the country (another brilliant idea by Enver Hoxha paranoid megalomaniac leader number 1) everyone seems quite ready to move on and everyone seems a tad sad that the world tends to look at them in a generalised discriminatory way............ my advise to anyone: just go there.......

... ha, anyway how boring would this blog be without a little bit of cheese now and then..??!!) Walking off the ferry I was stepping into a glorious hot day. My first port of call (pardon the pun) was immigration and not knowing where it was I figured the easiest way to find it was to follow the stamped of other passengers. The immigration office was housed in a small building close to the entrance of the port and stepping inside was like what Id imagine stepping into the New York stock ...

After a long bus ride I arrived back in Tirana and headed back to the hostel. For my last night in Albania, I didn't really do much of anything. While I didn't exactly enjoy my time in Albania, it was a really interesting travel experience and I'm glad I went there. It was definitely the toughest time I've had traveling, partially because of the infrastructure (or lack-thereof) and partially because of my lack of Albanian language skills ...

... a clientele that looked like they belonged in Pacha in Ibiza. Whereas Leeds costs 3 pound a drink, we got wasted in Tirane for about a tenner and had enough change for about 12 kebabs. We ate 2. Still with me, nearly finished now. We feel indebted to our hosts, without meeting them our experiences may not have been the same, but even so we would like to suggest people seriously consider Albania as a summer holiday destination. The people are friendly, genuine, and ...

... any change so gave it to us for free. Eni suggested that we went to spend the money on icecream instead- what a great idea! In the afternoon we chilled out around the house, which is beautiful. It's a bungalow but really could be a holiday villa as there's a terrace/balcony outside, great sunshine and views over the whole of Kruja. Later on we went for a volleyball match in the local high school. Quite a lot of the Albanian teenagers ...

... took me on a 20 minute taxi to the border. We even got stopped by the police who wondered why I was going to Albania. They thought it was funny that i even wanted to go. I had to walk across the border. The montenegrons were thorougly searching every speck on the albanians cars. I walked through gave them my passport easy as. I walk up to the Albanian crossing. Had to pay 10 euros to enter. This guy walks up and asks me if i want a taxi to Shkouder. The next city in town. He ...

... to the mini buses. At that minute, some dodgey bloke agreed to drive us to the mini-bus station. This is the same mini bus station that he and his mates tried to convince us didn't exist and that we would have to get into one of their taxis for the 200 km drive to Tirana. We ended up giving some magazine delivery guy 10 Euros for a trip into the capital. He couldn't speak English, we couldn't speak Albanian and so we all just sat in the front seat eating chocolate. Tirana was ...