The city of Tirana, and first impressions of Albania

Albania's population is about 2.8 million people, and about 500,000 of them live here in the capital city of Tirana. The country itself is only slightly larger than the state of Vermont!

Yesterday was our first day in Albania, and if the first day is any indication, we are going to LOVE Albania! Now of course it's only been one day, but so far it comes across as a mixture between Turkey and Romania, and we loved both of those countries.

We woke up to a mix of sun and clouds, and it never did rain. The high was about 13C (57F) with a light breeze.

The view from our apartment balcony.

We went for a short walk at 8:00am just to pick up some breakfast supplies. What fun it was seeing such a great selection of foods that are more to our liking. And cheese! We have probably missed cheese the most!

Ruth had made a list of the highlights of the downtown area, and I input them into our maps.me app so we wouldn't miss anything. We will be returning to downtown another time, but we wanted to see the highlights.

First stop was a Vodafone store to get a local SIM card. The girl spoke perfect English. She says all the young people study English in school.

We chose the option that is valid for 30 days and it comes with 3000 minutes of calling, 500 text messages, 8.5 GB of data, with another 10GB just for social media. Cost was 1,400 lek ($17 CAD, $13.60 USD) as a new customer for the first month, and 2,000 lek ($24 CAD, $19.40 USD) for every month after that. That should easily do us for a month since we plan to have WiFi at all of our accommodations.

Next, we headed for the central square.

Nice view of the mountains.

Notice the new office tower being constructed.

The white building is a casino and restaurant complex.

Wide boulevard with lots of decorations.

Colorful government building.

Another modern tower.

Old meets new.

This mosque is supposed to be worth visiting, but unfortunately it is undergoing renovations.

Albania has an interesting religious history. The Communist government that was in power between 1946 to 1992 had declared Albania as the worlds first officially Atheist state, and in the 1960's had attempted to eradicate religion of any kind. There are no official statistics, but the 2010 census declared that 55% listed Muslim, 26% Christian, and the balance "irreligious". But walking around yesterday we didn't see a single woman who would normally be identifiable as Muslim based on what she was wearing.

The main central plaza.

Mural.

The flag of Albania.

The Albania Opera House.

Scenery at the central plaza.

Ruth, and a fancy two storey merry go round.

Beautiful view of the mountains.

Albanian Orthodox Church.

Ruth at the entrance. 

Built in 2012.

And it's already having some work done!

Big chandelier!

Some of the traffic lights have sections where the entire pole lights up!

Green.

Yellow.

Red.

Odd, but it was a lot brighter in real life!

Pedestrian street.

Ruth, at an odd art structure called "The Cloud Pavilion".

Something going on.

We came across some kind of media event. Obviously involving some famous politician because there was a lot of security. 

Cameras!

This huge new mosque isn't open yet.

It looks like it has been taking many years to build.

Hey... I always wanted to have a bar named after me!

This old bridge dates to the 1700's.

What remains of Tirana Castle.

A shop displaying traditional clothing.

Quirky.

One of the thousands of concrete military bunkers located in Albania.

I will tell you the story of the bunkers in a future post.

Another modern building.

Right around when we were getting hungry, I received a message from our Airbnb host recommending a good restaurant that is reasonably priced and serves typical traditional Albanian food. Funny story, but we were going to go to a Mexican restaurant that we had read about! But this sounded better.

We arrived at the Piceri Era restaurant and were welcomed inside. It looked a little posh and we were worried that it might be above our price range. But when we looked at the menu, we were pleasantly surprised!

Just a word about Covid here in Albania. Like any other country in the world, the rules often don't make any sense. Here, it is law to wear a mask in any public place. We're assuming that includes outdoors, but can't find anything that says that specifically. Out walking around, we would say that about half wear a mask outdoors, and about half don't. To me, wearing it outdoors is overkill, but that's just my opinion based on the research that I've done. Anyway, we wear it outside. And we've noticed that everyone wears a mask indoors. Except when it comes to restaurants, which of course you can't wear a mask to eat and drink. And all restaurants, bars, and coffee shops are operating normally, but only until 8pm when the full curfew kicks in until 6am. So you sit down in the restaurant and everybody takes their mask off. We were easily 1.5 meters away from the nearest person, so that is supposed to be okay. The staff were all wearing some kind of fancy clear plastic thing that covers their mouth, but sits about an inch and a half away from their mouth. It's hard to describe, and we hadn't seen that kind of device before.

We arrived at about 12:30pm and it was nearly empty, but by the time we left at about 2:00pm, it was nearly full. I guess it is typical to eat lunch fairly late.

Our first wine and beer in Albania.

Me, enjoying my first Albanian beer!

I think there will be many more over the next few weeks!

We shared an appetizer made with peppers and cheese.

I had the pork sausage.

Ruth had the stuffed eggplant.

Ruth had two glasses of wine with lunch! And I had one beer. Including tip, the bill was 2,587 lek ($31.25 CAD, $25.00 USD).

I think that Albania is going to be very affordable for us.

We stopped at a bigger shop and did some groceries. Locally made Albanian beer and wine are inexpensive, but so are some imports. We bought a 3 liter jug of imported Italian white for 570 lek ($6.90 CAD, $5.50 USD). A half liter can of beer is approximately 80 lek ($1.00 CAD, $0.79 USD) Fruits and veggies were a little more than we expected, but still reasonable. And I think they will be cheaper outside the city.

So, based on first impressions, we are going to love Albania!

This morning, we have to vacate the apartment by 11:00am, so we will go put our things in the car and then do some more walking around. Then after 3:00pm we can check into our new place on the outskirts of the city where we will be staying for a full week.

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