A beautiful day in Berat, Albania

We had two busy days in a row, so we didn't have anything strenuous planned on Thursday. We relaxed for the morning, and then went for a walk around town.

Our cottage is located right in the center of town, and there are a lot of walks we can do right from town so the rental car might end up parked the entire time we're here. It doesn't seem to make sense to pay for a car rental when the vehicle is just parked, but there is some logic to what we're doing.

When we rented a car in Romania we did so several times, for shorter periods of time. It was frustrating arranging rentals, and trying to get deals, and dropping the car off and picking it up. It turned out we would have been better off simply renting for the entire time we were there, and writing off the cost of the days we didn't use it. Our monthly car rental here in Albania is pretty inexpensive, so the convenience is worth it to us.

The main road outside our cottage.

This is the big grocery store that is next to our cottage.

The cottage is actually located on the other side of this building.

All that remains of the original palace of the Pasha of Berat.

The "Pasha" was the ruler at the time.

Pedestrian street.

This building has paintings across the top of it.

The pedestrian street is lined with restaurants and cafes.

The Albanians love their cafes!

Can you tell why Berat is called "The City of a Thousand Windows"?

The big Hotel Colombo.

It's a new 5 star luxury hotel that opened in 2019.

You can get a deluxe double room for 10,000 lek ($120 CAD, €80, $95 USD) per night.

Cathedral of the Orthodox Church of Albania.

Other than the big chandelier, the interior is quite plain.

We stopped in at a grocery store just to see if they had gluten free bread. We had been able to find some in Tirana, but haven't seen any since. As we were wandering around, I overheard a guy speaking perfect North American English. I looked around the corner, and it was a guy probably in his 60's and talking on a cell phone. He finished up, and as he came around, I said "there's a language we haven't heard very often around here".

Turns out he's an American who has been living here in Berat for 15 years now. Says he totally loves Berat. He didn't offer much more to the story, and we didn't pry, but he did answer some of our questions. We asked about gluten free bread, and he said it was unlikely that we would find it here, but he did say that the local bakeries make a type of bread made with corn flour.

We stopped in at a butcher and bought some ground beef. Then at a baker. And sure enough, we bought a loaf of corn bread for 50 lek (60 cents CAD). We never did find the candlestick maker.

We were headed home to have a late lunch when we walked by a small restaurant that had a sign out front with some local specialties advertised on it. Reasonably priced, so we changed our plans and decided to have lunch out.

Really friendly people. The lady didn't speak English, and we were prepared to ask some questions using Google Translate, but she brought someone who did speak English.

They brought an appetizer with bread and pickles and olives.

And we each had a plate of this.

Mine was with some kind of meat (lamb?), and Ruth's was with chicken.

Can't remember what the Albanian name of it was, but it was a type of stew. Really good, and inexpensive. We only had water to drink, and the total cost for both of us was 700 lek ($8.50 CAD, $6.70 USD).

Back at the cottage later, we sat outside for a while but it didn't take long to cool off enough that we were forced back indoors.

There was a knock at the door and it was our host lady with a bowl of homemade cherry jam for us. Such friendly people! In fact, I'm eating some corn bread with homemade cherry jam as I write this. It's delicious!

Today, we are headed up to the castle! There's apparently a lot to see up there, so we had better get going. Sunshine, and calling for a high of 16C (62F) today. 

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