One month in Albania

Can you believe that we have now been in Albania for a full month? We arrived on March 15th in the capital city of Tirana. We're allowed to stay in Albania for three months, so with one month down already, three months might not be enough! That's okay... we definitely plan on returning with our new motorhome at some point in time.

We've been trying to spend a week at a time at each place we stay. That normally gives us enough time to explore the area with day trips, and when you book a weekly rental through Airbnb you normally get a discount of some kind.

We ended up doing 9 days in Tirana, and then a full two weeks in Berat because of the dental work I was having done there. Turns out that was fine, because we really enjoyed Berat and area. And we have just finished a week in Vlorë, and now we have a week coming up in Sarandë.

Our route in Albania so far.

You can zoom in and out using the map above so you can see how much of Albania we have travelled in one month. Not much! But we love slow travel and exploring as much as we can. Consider that Albania is about the size of the state of Vermont! 

Since we are allowed three months here, and we have a possible two months left, our plan totally depends on whether or not we are able to get into Germany to pick up our new motorhome, or whether or not we decide to go back to Canada for a few weeks. But if we end up here for the next two months, we're totally fine with that.

And the best parts of Albania are still to come!

After our week in Sarandë we will go to Gjirokastër, but only for a few days because accommodation is a little more expensive there. Then continue inland to Korçë and spend a week there. Then north, and hopefully by mid May things will start to warm up enough in the mountains that we can do some hiking there.

Totally enjoying our time here. Albania is a little more expensive than Turkey, but not by much. Accommodation is about the same price, beer and wine are slightly cheaper with more availability, but groceries are more expensive. I'm going to say there's more availability with the groceries here as well, although we certainly survived with no problem in Turkey. The people are just as friendly, and there is probably a little more English spoken here than in Turkey. Also, while Turkey is a very moderate Muslim country, you still very much notice the Muslim culture especially with the very loud calls to prayer that you hear several times per day just about everywhere in Turkey. Here in Albania, about 50% say they are Muslim, but you really don't notice it, while much of the balance of the people here are simply not religious in any way at all.

Yesterday we did a power walk downtown to get the cell phone recharged and pick up some more gluten free bread just in case it's not available at the next location. The bread was on sale at 379 lek ($4.60 CAD, $3.70 USD) per loaf, down from the 429 we paid when we arrived. Nice! So we bought four more. 

The cell phone recharge cost 2,000 lek ($24.25 CAD, $19.40 USD) for 3,000 minutes, 500 SMS, 5.5 GB of anything use, and 10 GB of social media use. Considering that our accommodation always includes WiFi, this is more than enough for us.

Okay, gotta get packing... we need to be out of here by 10am, and we have at least a three hour drive ahead of us! Next stop, Sarandë.

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