Albania. Perhaps not your average destination for a weekend break, I guess, but Mr D and I found ourselves with a spare long weekend and nowhere to go. Having checked our frequent flyer accounts we discovered the closest available weekend option was Tirana. Over the years we’re lucky enough to have travelled to almost everywhere within a do-able in a weekend 3 hour flight of London but Tirana was one of the few places we’d not visited.
When I floated the idea of a random weekend in Albania, Mr D was rather lukewarm on the idea. Why would we want to go there, he asked? I could sort of see his point. There is a view of Albania that is was a poor country, full of dodgy con men, littered with buildings constructed in a 1970s Communist brutalist style and with roads which are barely passable unless you’re driving a horse and cart.
How wrong can you be?
We realised as soon as we arrived at Tirana’s very modern airport that our preconceptions were very wide of the mark.
We’d arranged for our hotel to send a car to take us to pick us up from the airport. As we stepped outside the airport we were greeted with rows of flashy cars. What no horse and cart?
Our driver (who’d lived in the US for many years) gave us a brilliant introduction to Albania and its history in the car journey into central Tirana. As I looked out the window of the car another two of my myths on the country were shattered. The roads were good quality and on top of that, the roads were not full of horse and carts. They were in fact crammed full of Porsche Cayennes, BMW X5s and apart from those every other car was a Mercedes. And then a further surprise…many of the cars were carrying UK license plates. Hmmmm……
As we drove into the centre of Tirana our driver explained the history behind the multi coloured buildings which were everwhere. The former mayor of Tirana, who was an artist, had encouraged the residents of the city to paint their buildings in an effort to cheer up the city post-Communist rule. I liked the crazy tutti frutti style very much.
We ate dinner in the Blok area of Tirana. This small grid of streets – previously out of bounds to ordinary Albanians as it housed the villa of former dictator Enver Hoxha and the Communist party apparatchiks – is where most of the city’s nightlife and restaurants is based.
I really enjoyed the atmosphere. It was a warm balmy night and everywhere sat the city’s youth knocking back with a beer, smoking and, very much like Albania’s neighbour Greece, drinking a lot of coffee. Stroll around. It’s easy to find a bar you like the look of. I felt completely safe in Tirana at all times.
So how about the food in Tirana? Well, the places we ate in may not win any culinary awards but the food was very tasty and simple. Peppers stuffed with cheese appeared on many menus.
And similar to Turkey and Greece, it was easy to order simple grilled meats.
Unfortunately Coeliac Travel don’t offer cards in Albanian which is perhaps not surprising for a country of 3 million. So instead I used an online translation tool before we went to translate the English version of the card into Albanian. When we arrived at the hotel in Tirana, I asked the hotel receptionist to take a look at the Albanian. As you can see, the results of this method were not overly impressive!
Next post: 7 fun things to do on a weekend in Tirana. Really!
Wow!
I would imagine going somewhere that off the beaten track would be a bit of an adventure for a ‘normal’ person. I admire you for doing it with Coeliac as well!
Mike
Author
Thanks, I absolutely love an adventure! I was so happy to be able to eat safely and have fun in a fairly off beat place.
Have you been back to Albania since 2011? I am wondering if it is any easier for a coeliac traveler now. I have a family event scheduled there in summer 2019. I travel a lot, but find it is much safer for me in places where I can read labels and where there are government standards for labeling gluten. I am leery of restaurants because of cross-contamination so generally look for places to stay where I can cook. With many family activities scheduled, I would probably want to bring my own food to spare my hosts the difficulty of providing separate meals. One question is whether the proximity to Italy (where there’s a relatively high incidence of gluten-intolerance and regulation is good) means that there are many gluten-free Italian products available in stores? Thanks for your help.
In September, I went to Albania with an Albanian friend who goes back frequently to visit his family in the Mountains at Lepushe, near Vermosh. After an exchange of cigarettes (I don’t smoke) with one of the many “car rental touts” who proliferate the airport, he was able to secure a deal for 25,000LEK (€250) for 10 days hire, a car picked us up and we travelled about 1km from the airport to their rental site and picked up a decent VW Golf for €225 cash for the tour. Started at Shengjin on the coast, stayed 3 nights at Delfin Resort Hotel (5 star) for €70 each per night to include breakfast, lunch and dinner from their excellent servery with all drinks (inc. bottled water, draught beer and wine), plus use of the swimming pool and sun loungers included. … Travelled on to Velipoje resort to stay 2 nights at DeLuxe hotel with the same deal (excluding beer, wine and pool) then onward to Lepushe via the mountain switchback roads and had the best fish and chips ever (oven baked trout with golden fried chips) at a restaurant near to a mountain fish farm served by a small concrete reservoir of mountain water. Everywhere we went near his home, the householders offered us home brewed Grappa from a jug, they have all built comfortable chalets for tourists in their grounds. Lovely roasted lamb and goat served with peppers, onions and potatoes (no gluten in sight). On the way back, we stopped off in Shkoder and had a local dish, Tave Krapi (carp casserole) at a lakeside restaurant, common carp are caught from the Shkoder Lake and rivers, then purged (cleaned) by keeping them in a freshwater tank for a few days, served with prunes, plums, apricots, peppers and potatoes, delicious and all gluten free), meal for 2 with red wine was €45, fabulous. New hotels going up everywhere at the resorts, it will soon become the “go to” place of Europe.
Author
Hi Ken, this sounds like a brilliant trip! Thanks so much for sharing, the Delfin hotel looks great!