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Back in August we were discussing what we wanted to do as we looked forward toward the rest of the year. As much as we were enjoying our time in Iceland and then Greenland, we recognized how expensive both locations were in comparison to what we feel comfortable with from a budgeting standpoint. Obviously, we didn’t let their expense remove them from our plans to experience them, but we also thought it would be good to try and balance that expense as best as possible later in the year. We have been fortunate to spend a lot of time in Europe through our years together and that is why Europe isn’t a focus for us in this initial part of our global adventure. Knowing we were going to be seeing friends in Ireland, we decided to search “least expensive places to visit in Europe” and see if anything piqued our interest. Something did. Albania was one of the countries that led that list and it’s a place we have not been. We did some research and decided – let’s go spend a month in the capital of Albania – Tirana.

Last Tuesday, we woke up in Dublin, packed up, filled up the rental car with fuel, and returned it at the airport. We arrived at the airport three hours early, which is fairly standard for us given that we never know how the security processes and passport controls will go, and we don’t like to rush. After checking in (we didn’t realize that we weren’t supposed to check in until two hours before, but the agent didn’t realize how early we were until the end and so he just held onto our boarding passes until the two-hour mark). While we waited for the two-hour mark, we went upstairs in Terminal One and I had the Irish breakfast, while Sandy enjoyed eggs and porridge. After eating, we went back and picked up our boarding passes and then easily went through security and passport control and our flight left a little behind schedule but landed in Amsterdam basically on time. We had fresh juices and some peanuts during our layover and then we were wheels up for Tirana at 5pm. We landed in Tirana at 7:15, went through passport control, picked up our bags, grabbed some money at the ATM because we have read that Albania is very cash-centric, and found the taxi that our AirBnB host coordinated for us. Our driver didn’t do so good with Google Maps directions, and he missed several of our turns. We ended up at the apartment at 8:45pm instead of 8:25pm. No problem. Ana Maria was there to meet us and tell us all about the apartment and make sure we had everything we needed.

Hungry, we walked three minutes to a little café called Organic Corner and had chicken salads. Sandy also had fresh squeezed juice and I had a mixed berry smoothie. We stopped at the grocery store to get bananas, cereal, and milk for breakfasts and then went back to the apartment, unpacked, and went to bed.

Wednesday, we were up later than usual because of the travel day yesterday and getting to bed so late. After breakfast, we walked to Lake Tirana Park (also called Grand Park) and we each did our workouts around the lake. There is a wonderful three-mile trail around the lake and many cafes along the way. We can already tell that this is going to be one of our favorite places to spend time here in Tirana.

After our workouts, we went home and put our grocery list together for the week. We then went to Era for lunch, which we found in the Lonely Planet book. It specializes in traditional Albanian food, and we tried a few different things: Childhood flatbread is a cheesy flatbread; chicken soup that is one of their specialties; mixed salad; and meatballs with pistachio and yogurt. Everything we ate was delicious and it’s easy to think that we may be coming back here more than once. After lunch, we stopped by the gym to scope it out and Sandy bought a membership for the month – I plan to pay as I go because I don’t think I will go as often as she will. We then did our grocery shopping, which was a little more difficult than I thought it would be in terms of not being able to speak a common language. We have always been able to figure things out – I just thought there might be more English spoken in the largest city and capital. Sandy did the produce shopping at the corner stand by our apartment and then did laundry for us. We watched Frasier before going to bed.

Thursday didn’t have much going on – we did our workouts at the park again and ate all of our meals at home. Greek salads for lunch and steaks, baked potatoes, and broccoli for dinner. The meat quality was lacking so they weren’t our favorite steaks. We’ll try again. We worked on the blog and mapping out the things we know we want to do while we are in Albania – not only in Tirana, but also some day trips outside of the capital.

Friday was our first day to really get out and explore Tirana. We did our workouts at the gym – it’s a very nice gym. Good equipment and very clean. Like many gyms we have visited, they ask members to not wear their outside shoes into the workout area, so we need to take our workout shoes with us and change when we get there. That’s not common at the gyms we’ve used in the US, but it is very common just about everywhere else we have been. In the afternoon, we went out to do the walking tour that is listed in the Lonely Planet guide. That was nice because we had only been in our apartment area by the park for the first couple of days here and this took us into the center of town. Tirana has a population of around 400,000 and the first thing that struck us is how many cafes and restaurants there are. There is a ton to choose from. The walking tour took us to Skanderbeg Square, which is in the town center. Skanderbeg was born in Albania in 1405, and he led resistance against the Ottomans, delaying their expansion to Europe. He is revered as a national hero in Albania. The National History Museum (located on the square) is unfortunately closed for a few years for renovations, so we took that off our list. Sandy is so sad. 🤣 There are some interesting buildings from an architectural standpoint throughout the central area. It seems like the architects used all of the creativity that they had suppressed during the communist years.

We walked by a couple of churches and mosques – religious tolerance is strong here, just like it was in Jordan. The walk also took us by Pyramida (120 steps to the top), which is now a shopping area but originally was a monument to the communist dictator Enver Hoxha.

We also walked by his former residence. Enver Hoxha came to power shortly after World War II and led the country for 40 years under a brutal dictatorship – brutal for his opponents anyway. We will learn more about him as we visit other places. At the end of the walk, we stopped at Chocolatiano – Sandy enjoyed a chocolate Nutella éclair and I had a scoop of chocolate ice cream and a scoop of strawberry ice cream. We then went to Radio Bar to find Albanian beer. We had Pan Siringha beers and burgers. The beers were lighter lagers, but had good flavor for how light they were. After dinner, we stopped at the grocery store to get popcorn and oil because we headed home to watch the Black Panther movie and Sandy made homemade popcorn during the show. It was a great day of exploration.

Saturday morning, I got up and watched the Florida State game. They lost to Virginia – a high-scoring game where neither defense played well at all. Sandy made egg sandwiches for us and we left the apartment at 11:45 to head out and explore. First stop was a place called Your Brownie Guy. When we got there, the storefront was locked up and it looked like you could only order via the local food-delivery app. I found their WhatsApp number and we were able to order that way. We tried the chocolate chip cookies (one with brown sugar and one with white) and the brownie. Oh my gosh – so good. The business has three staff members – the baker, his fiancé, and his mom. His fiancé came down to take our order and deliver it. Later, he walked by to put a delivery in their storage area. It was nice talking with them and feeling their excitement for what is clearly going to be a very successful business enterprise. Like Era, this is a place that I suspect we’ll order from again while we are here. Then we walked toward Skanderbeg Square to take the hop-on hop-off bus tour of the city. It started to rain along the way, so we stopped outside a restaurant’s overhang and things stayed pretty dry for us. When it lightened up, we walked again and then we got caught in more rainfall and ended up with soaked feet. We made it to the bus tour in time to start the 2pm tour. Our plan was to stay on the bus for the whole route because we were mainly interested in the commentary and we would go back to certain places when we had more time. With the traffic, the tour ended up taking a little more than two hours – it supposedly takes 90 minutes usually. The extra time was fine and the commentary was interesting. We learned a lot about the history of the city and the sites we went past. During Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship, he originally aligned Albania with the Soviet Union and then when Stalin died, he switched his alliance to China. In the 1970s, he drifted from the Chinese alliance and was more alone and nervous of nuclear war. He instituted the building of nearly 200,000 bunkers around the country to make sure Albanians would have a safe place in the even of an attack. Following our bus tour, we went to a museum called Bunk’Art 2. It was crowded and it took about 90 minutes to get through the museum. It was very interesting. The museum is in one of the bunker complexes in the center of the city that was built to keep government running from underground. There are several corridors and each corridor has rooms along both sides. Those rooms are now filled with historical artifacts that explain the repression and persecution under the secret police (Sigurimi) of Hoxha’s regime. I enjoy learning about this history but at the same time, it can be a difficult history with which to be faced. After Bunk’Art 2, we went to Duff’s American Sports Bar. We had beers and to eat, I had a small order of wings that were decent (I don’t like them breaded usually and these were breaded) and a Philly cheese steak sandwich. Sandy had an order of nachos and a chicken quesadilla. The food was overall just ok and other than all of the American sports memorabilia and if they have a game on that is of interest, I don’t know if we’ll make it back here. It was another great day of exploring Tirana.

Sunday was more sightseeing in Tirana. We started with brunch at Hana Corner Café. We had poached eggs on buttery toast with asparagus and I had hot chocolate while Sandy had chai tea. The experience was ok, but the prices were higher than they should be and we’ll look for other coffee shops during our time here. After brunch we went by bus to the area where you can find the cable car up one of Tirana’s mountains. The bus system is very easy to navigate. Each ride costs the equivalent of 50 cents payable in cash on the bus and Google Maps includes Tirana’s bus schedules. The cable car only takes cash and we didn’t have enough with us but they have an ATM right there, which worked out fine. We rode up the cable car to Dajti Mountain along with four travelers from Israel. It was nice talking with them and then we explored the area at the top. Looking out across Tirana, it was easy to see rain showers making their way towards us, so we decided to sit down for lunch in the restaurant at the top.

Sandy had a traditional Albanian dish with organ meats and sauce, and I had a Caesar salad – both tasted excellent. We are enjoying the Albanian food a lot more than we expected. We shared two glasses of Albanian wine – one red and one white and we liked them both. Once the rain let up, we took the cable car back down and went to Bunk’Art 1 – the other large government bunker from the communist times that has been turned into a museum.

This one was focused on the history of Albania for the last 100 years and then quite a bit about life under the rule of communism. Touring the bunker took me about two hours and we learned a lot of interesting stories from that time period – one of which centered on the rescue of a plane full of medical professionals that crash-landed in Albania in 1943. We then took the bus back to our apartment. I watched the Ryder Cup (great comeback by the Americans that fell just a little short after a terrible start) and the Bucs game (they lost to the Eagles but they almost overcame their own terrible start) while Sandy caught up with Heather on the phone.

Other than our workouts in the park and breakfasts and Greek salads at home for lunch, we don’t have too much to report for the first three days of this week. Sandy made chili for us to enjoy for dinners on Monday and Tuesday nights – delicious as usual. Yesterday we spent a couple of hours at one of the cafes by the lake in the park and Sandy had the chance to chat with our nephew, Brad for a few minutes. Today was our monthly office day focused on paying bills, backing up pictures and laptop information. For dinner tonight, we went to another restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet – this one is called Tymi and is very economical and serves traditional Albanian food. They are known for their grilled meats. Another great experience and lots of locals there. We enjoyed cornbread with yogurt, chicken skewers, Mexican chicken and veggies, and meatballs.

That summarizes the start of our month in Albania. It’s early, but we are impressed so far and we are looking forward to seeing more of Tirana and getting out to see a little more of Albania outside the capital.