Balkan Adventure

Dear Family and Friends.

Chuck and I returned home from visiting family in Arizona the first of March and had one week to get ready for our Balkan adventure.  We booked a tour through Gate1 to see Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia.  We arrived in Tirana three days before the actual tour began.

On March 9, we flew to Quito from Cuenca.  We took the 7:00pm flight, stayed overnight at the Wyndham hotel at the Quito airport and departed Quito for Amsterdam the next day, Sunday, at about 3:00pm.  

When we arrived in Amsterdam, it was Monday about 1:00pm.  We stayed at a hotel near the Amsterdam airport to get a good night's rest before taking our final flight to Tirana, Albania.

I guess you could call this relaxed travel.  It sure helped for us to arrive in Tirana wide eyed and alert.  No travel fatigue.

Before we went there, I knew very little about Albania.  Of the four countries we visited, Albania has the smallest number of tourists.  However, tourism is picking up there and the government is doing many improvements to the city to attract more tourists.

Here is a little information about Tirana.  It is the capital and largest city of Albania. Albania was under communist rule from the end of WWII until the mid 1990's  Communism came to an end because of the Balkan turmoil which caused the breakup of Yugoslavia.  Albania, which was never part of Yugoslavia, is now a democratic republic.

We had a wonderful airbnb condo located right in the heart of Tirana.  

The view of a colorful and popular plaza from the balcony of our condo.

The glass covered building in the above picture is the covered market.  Along with the fruits of veggies, there were vendors of tourist items.

The man we rented our condo from recommended the national dish.  It is meat sausage with a sour cream and cucumber sauce.  We tried it, it was okay, but we searched for food that was more suitable to our tastes for the rest of our meals.  We found an incredible Italian restaurant nearby where we had several meals.

Here is a picture of the best pasta I have ever had.  It had basil, tiny sweet tomatoes, clams, shrimp in a wonderful garlic white sauce.  

The main boulevard was lined with trees that had their trunks colorfully wrapped.  This main street became a pedestrian street on the weekend.  As we found out later it is many purposes.

The next day, on that same street, we witnessed this demonstration going on.  There were police in riot gear and big tanks behind us. We didn't stick around to find out why....it was time to go somewhere else for sure.

This is Skanderbeg Square.  It still has a very communist feel to it.  In the background is the National Museum of History.

Statue of Sulejman Pashe Bargini, the legendary founder of Tirana.

Besides the plazas and museums, we went to their beautiful mall.  At six stories high it was quite impressive.  

Albania is a secular state with no state religion, the freedom of belief and religion is explicitly guaranteed in the constitution.

According to the 2010 census 55% of the population is Muslim, 12% Christian, 6.5% Eastern Orthodox and 5% Roman Catholic. The remaining population reported having no religion.

Here is a photo I took of the Great Mosque from the top of the shopping mall. 

 This photo is of the Orthodox Autocephalous Church.

The Catholic church, St. Paul's Cathedral was being renovated and all covered up, but I found this statue of Mother Teresa in front of the church interesting.  I learned that she was born in Macedonia but her parents moved to Albania.  During the communist period they were living in Albania and she was denied entry into Albania to see her parents.  Now, Albania claims her as their own.

It was so nice to have a few days here to really get the feel of the city before our actual tour started.

In the next post, I will talk about another town in Albania.

Love,

Nancy