Hotel Helia Vlore

... br>Tirana hat leider keinen Busbahnhof , Busse fahren von allen moeglichen Stellen in der Stadt ab. Habe aber den Bus nach Berat erfolgreich gefunden, musste nur 45min auf die Abfahrt warten und die Fahrt dauerte dann 2h. Die Strasse fuehrte zunaechst nach Durres, der Hafenstadt Albaniens, bevor es wieder ins Landesinnere ging. Der Strand sah nicht besonders schoen aus, allerdings habe ich im Moment auch keinen Sonnenschein mehr. Obwohl ...

... get off and walk the rest of the way but need to stop for directions. These private bus areas can be at intersections or in back alleys. They can also change locations and are without street signage (you need to look at a sign in the window). This makes it difficult for tourists to figure out logistics. We end up waiting almost an hour before it takes off. Albania must be the place busses go to die. They are in terrible shape ...

... by the fashion police. There is no way I’d be allowed in a bar like that in Australia. While waiting for a bus to Berat today we spent about half an hour trying to converse with a couple of old locals. It was hillarious but amazingly we managed to commuinicate using broken language and alot of gesturing. I dont know who found it funnier, them or us

We arrived in Berat this afternoon around 4pm. Berat,is a town that has a fortified city on a hill above it. This is a ...

... the city was nicknamed "City of Stacking Windows". To walk inside them was quite an experience too; the narrow, steep and winding alleys are cool and dark, and lo and behold I found they still use donkeys to transport heavy stuffs where cars cannot enter. Another thing this city is famous of is its citadel on a low hill top, which, at 2400 years of age, is the oldest inhabited citadel in Europe.

I spent two days there, stayed in the apt of a PCV (another fringe ...

Berat, Albania, is a small town in the center of the country. Albania is funny because it was shut off from the world for so long during communism, and they are slowly rebuilding themselves and exploring being part of the greater world. This sounds little strange, but it really is like this. A lot of people expressed fear about going to Albania, wondering if it was safe, etc. but we had a great ...

... were pointing until it didnt really go anywhere so I poped into a clothes shop and asked the young lady where the bus station was. She spoke a little bit of English and hailed a bus for me to jump on which dropped me at a petrol garage where the bus stops to go to Berat. The shop lady was lovely and really helpful fair play to hear, she even gave me an orange as a parting gift. The bus was fairly ...

... country in old times. They are also likely to be a bit stubborn especially in the villages but friendly though. The beaches near Vlora are very popular in Albania and preferred by a large number of tourists mainly Albanians coming from other regions of Albania as well as from Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro. We can mention beaches like Plazh I Ri, Vilat, Radhime, Orikum, Dhermi, Himara, Jale etc. Around ...

I got up early today after yet another late evening out; a big gang of us from the hostel in Tirana decided to have a dinner out together and follow up with some drinks. We didn't actually get around to dining until about 9:30, so that made for a late evening from the start. Then, going a little upmarket, we stopped for a drink at a posh tower off the nightlife district of Blloku, where we got to look over the city lights from a rotating bar. We finished off at a ...

... it was captured by the Romans in the 2nd century BC. The town became part of the unstable frontier of the Byzantine Empire following the fall of the Roman Empire and, along with much of the rest of the Balkan peninsula, it suffered from repeated invasions by Slavs and other "barbarian" tribes. During the Byzantine period, it was known as Pulcheriopolis. The Bulgarians under Simeon I captured the town in the 9th century but were eventually driven out in the 11th ...

... Rovers and Jaguars driven by decidely un-British looking people have been seen by us too. They don't seem to go for the cheap cars, just Merc's, Audi's and VW's. We haven't seen any sign of the Rover 820 that Sarah used to own that was stolen from outside her sister's house in Manchester. We have spent the last 3 days travelling with a german bloke called David, a student from Frankfurt, who is fluent in ...