Hotel Corona 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 ...

... this area are incredibly cheap. <br><br>The ride reveals a country that appears as poor as 3rd world ones such as I have seen in parts of South America and Asia. Used tires, partially filled cans of oil, milk in recycled coke bottles, donkeys hauling trailers along the main road (as were cattle) &#8230; <br><br>Tirana is a very crowded city that is filled with cars that are too packed to move. Pedestrians challenge cars for right of way. Traffic police are widespread but seem ...

... case mostly Italian. I don't know if that's because the country was practically annexed by Mussolini at one point, and the Italian language's usage enforced, or because the two both borrowed heavily from Greek way back when in the formative years of Europe. Maybe but for a few accidents of history, instead of getting romantic with our lovers, we'd all be getting lyrical... hey, wait a minute...whatever... So when I go to the market I start using ...

... en majorite et leur heros national est chretien-catholique; il les a delivre de l'emprise de la turquie, mais ce dernier pays est swans doute le pays qui exerce le plus grand influence culturelle sur l'albanie, etc etc... verifier sur wikipedia pour les dates de sa vie... permettez-moi de vous partager mon evaluation de ce voyage et des questions qui me restent. 1.evaluation:- je me suis depayse;-j'ai manque de contacts etablis avant de partir ...

... which queue might be the quickest. I stumped for the middle one but after 10Min's or so taking in the scene and observing the Albanian's run through immigration, dump their luggage, greet awaiting family and friends, before running back through immigration again to have their passports checked, I realised that I was getting no closer to the counter and that in fact the line of people in front of me seemed to be getting longer. It was at that moment I realised that the notion of a ...

... bag to throw away. She watched out the window as the little girl threw it on the ground and got back into the bus. Teaching young kids to throw their trash on the ground is not going help clean up the country. Riding the buses through the Albanian countryside, I saw concrete bunkers all over the place, looking like ugly, large mushrooms sticking out of the ground. These were all built under communism when Hoxha decided that they needed to ...

I had a grand time visiting Ejonta and her family in Albania. We ventured south to the beautiful Ionian Sea at Saranda, wandered the impressive ruins of Butrinti, and danced until the wee hours at Mango Beach. I even learned how to do traditional Albanian Dancing! Back in Tirana, we ...

... any scales - the butter came in a bag so I couldnt even use packaging as a guide - and they dont seem to have self raising flour or baking powder in Albania! So I tried to make a chocolate cake, which of course didnt rise, and I had no idea how long to leave it in the oven either. When it was finally cooked, it was quite solid and took a lot of effort to get it out the pan... but it looked and tasted just like chocolate brownies! Was a miracle.

... with a car. Same Same. Got to the town of Shkouder and then caught a 2 hour bus or so to the capital Tirana. Once i got to Tirana, I now had the trouble of converting my money into Leke on a sunday arvo at 6pm. Luckily i found a western union exchange open. The only one. Found my hostel on the other side of town. Dumped my bags, got some wierd triangular kebab, called a qebap. It had hot chips on the top and a wierd white sauce ive never tasted before. Down that with some ...

... of car you'll see in this country). The food vendor saw that we had completely stuffed up with the directions and that we were slightly intimated by the 8 lanes of traffic. He walked over to us and walked us across the road, with his hand out-stretched and yelling something in Albanian. He parted the see of traffic like some sort of biblical backpacker hero. We finally got on the bus and enjoyed looking at bunkers and the massive rocky mountains that cover the entire country.