We loved the area around Pizari i Ri market, which is a lovely, large square full of market stalls, cafes, restaurants, produce stands and space for people to socialize day and night. One evening my shin was (lightly) thwacked by an errant soccer ball while sitting at an outdoor café drinking my glass of white wine – part of the charm of being in spaces that are community-forward, kid-friendly and thoughtfully designed for all. Grace, of course, loved the stray cats strutting around the square, and I fell head over heels in love with a small brown puppy I found in a cardboard box. Perhaps we will become a house full of dog and cat friends upon our return?!

Tirana is full of a lot of unique history, and history I’m ashamed to say I knew little about until we visited. Albania’s independence was not recognized until 1913 and it only became a republic in 1946, yet the Albanian language is considered one of the oldest and most unique languages of the European continent (case in point: thank you is “faleminderit” and hello is “përshëndetje”). We visited Skanderbeg Square, with its mosaic-fronted museum depicting various famous Albanians through many eras. We saw a donated piece of the Berlin Wall and old ceiling joists from an Albanian labour camp at Checkpoint Park, a ‘Memorial to Communist Isolation’. We learned about Albanian political history walking through the halls and cells of a communist-era nuclear bunker in the Bunk’Art 2 Museum. We strolled across Tanner’s Bridge, a very well-preserved section of an 18^th-century Ottoman stone bridge in the centre of the modern city. And, we explored – and climbed the exterior staircases of – the Piramida, a pyramid-shaped building built as a museum in the late 1980’s. When built, it was said to be most expensive building ever constructed in Albania, and has since enjoyed lives as a conference centre, event space, NATO base during the Kosovo War, broadcasting centre, film location and now an IT and robotics space for Albanian youth and young start-ups.

Tirana is also, surprisingly to me, full of a lot of natural beauty if you look for it. We spent a few afternoons in various green spaces and parks, letting the kids burn off some energy with a soccer ball or on a playground. We spent many mornings at the Parku i Madh (Grand Park) of Tirana, a huge green space of paths, playgrounds, fields, fountains, exercise equipment and picnic areas surrounding an artificial lake. The full path was just under 10 km and started / ended at a series of lovely outdoor cafes, so a walk and a coffee there was a great way to start the day!

We cooked quite a bit in Albania but enjoyed some delicious dinners out as well: traditional lamb + yogurt stew and crepes filled with feta at Era Blloku (followed by raucous cheers from every open-air bar on our walk home as Albania scored in the first 30 seconds of their first Euro Cup game), beautiful salads and byrek at The Home, the most stunning ‘modern takes on traditional dishes’ at Mullixhiu (Go! Go! Go!), and lovely treats from the many, many pasticeri on street corners.

We got off to a rough start, Tirana and us, but we ended on a good note. As we posted more and more photos, we had friends back home saying that Albania was not a place they would have thought of visiting, or that they never realized how gorgeous it was. We’re glad our flight budget took us to Tirana and even happier to share some of the spots we loved there with our readers!

We didn’t have a lot of time there, but we did wander through the twisty, sloping, cobbled streets and came upon Tradita e Beratit restaurant inside the outer walls of an old 1700’s home (which belonged to the owners’ grandfather), with tables nestled amongst flowers and trees. Would highly recommend – the traditional Albanian dishes were delicious, the service was welcoming and friendly, and the setting was stunning. We saw various plaques (including on the home housing Tradita e Beratit) noting that members of the Albanian anti-fascist movement were safehoused there during WWII. We walked across the beautiful old Gorica Bridge, had coffees / gelatos, and returned to our very hot car for the remainder of the (snaking, hot, mountainous) drive.

One thing that I don’t do is adjust quickly; on this trip it has usually taken me at least a day in a new place to feel like I want to go out and explore. Whenever we arrive at a new place, I must unpack right away, and get everything settled and laid out in its spot. This sounds like a lot, but we now have it down to a fine art; the process is made simple with each of us having just one packing cube of clothing, and only a few other random cubes (toiletries, charging and tech equipment, notebooks and games, food staples). So, our first full day in Himarë was spent settling in, figuring out the lay of the land, enjoying phone calls with loved ones back home, and picking up groceries.

Once we were into the swing of things, Himarë offered a lot of adventures. We walked from our apartment(s) most mornings past Spile, Sfageio, Marachi, Prinos and Potami Beaches in an elongated 30-minute loop to get our day going. We climbed endless stairs up into the residential areas in the hills and watched packs of brown goats grazing in abandoned lots. We hiked the cliffside trail (unfortunately bulldozed through in parts for new development) past abandoned bunkers and the gorgeous little bay housing Kico Meniko restaurant (which, to my great disappointment, was not yet open for the season when we hiked by) to Livadhi Beach. We took a boat trip (on the ONE day it rained!) to see / swim in various beautiful areas only accessible via water, such as Aquarium Bay, Mirrors Beach, Monastery Cave, and Pirate’s Cave. We hiked down to Gjipë Canyon and spent the afternoon at the beach there, saying hello to the litter of piglets and their mama at the top of the trail. We explored Porto Palermo’s Cold War-era submarine bunker, as well as the stunning Himara Castle area (complete with donkey petting, a lizard-eating cat, and frappés at Café Butterfly – perhaps the best view on the coast!). And, I enjoyed a solo hike back to Livadhi and through some new trails on the way home, accidentally slipping down a rocky hill and garnering cuts and bruises in the process.

To offset all the adventures, we also had some really lovely downtime. We discovered that the Miamar Hotel on Livadhi would let us use their pool if we ate lunch at their charming little restaurant, so we took advantage of that a few days. We also paid a small fee to spend the day at the Rapos Resort’s pool. We hung out at the hilltop Locca Lounge where we met Bleri, the friendly bartender who had participated in international mixology competitions. We relaxed at cafés and lounges along the beachfront promenade while the kids frolicked on the sand and played with a boxful of newborn kittens we found. We cooked laidback dinners in our teeny-tiny bachelor apartment kitchen. And, we sat down as a family one morning and revisited what we each wanted and needed out of a trip like this (surprise, surprise… the wants of the kids were mostly in opposition to those of the parents; this trip is all about compromise!).

While we definitely noticed a surplus of abandoned garbage and partially built, deserted structures in Himarë, over our ten days there we came to really love the little town, its beautiful hillside hikes and aqua bays, and the friendly people we met there.

Himarë had offered such great hiking, so we were excited to try out a route or two in Sarandë… alas, the one we tried was such a trial that we gave up on attempting any others. We did rather more of a “mountainside scramble” through thorns and weeds in the beating sun, no discernable path to speak of, to get to Lekuresi Castle. It’s the one time I can remember wanting to give up altogether on a hike. Luckily, the castle was pretty and the views were good and the beer was cold! We ended up walking down the road partway to avoid the treachery of the route up, and we completed the day with showers, naps, and a movie night.

The oven in our villa did not work and the gas stovetop was a ball of flame every time we turned it on (terrifying!) so we ended up having a lot of easy, casual meals that didn’t need cooking. One of our favourites became tinned gigantes beans, a bunch of raw veggies, hummus, feta, and bread; fine with all of us, as it was too hot to cook / eat warm food there anyway. When we did eat out, we enjoyed amazing homemade pasta at Balbi 34 and a delicious mixed plate of seafood at Taverna Fish Filipi. We also tried Trileqe for dessert, which was amazing; like the Albanian version of Mexican Tres Leches cake.

We experienced cats on our balcony, slugs in our shower and turtles in the bar. We visited the Blue Eye, an absolutely stunning natural spring emerging from a fathomless vertical cave (literally, scientists cannot measure the depth due to the huge volume of high-pressure water emerging from the cave each second!). We went back to the floating obstacle course. And we had a lovely day trip to Ksamil just down the coast: lovely coffee on the dock at Sea Breeze and a delicious grilled fish lunch at Natyra before enjoying ocean dips from their beautiful overwater deck.

All in all, Sarandë was not our favourite destination, but we still had a good time there. In particular, we loved seeing the gorgeous Blue Eye and swimming in the frigid river downstream of it (you’re not supposed to swim right at the Eye, though we did see many folks in there) and strolling the promenade (especially at night, when it came alive with all manner of locals, tourists, dogs, lights, music and vendors). We’d recommend Ksamil or Himarë over Sarandë, though each has their highlights. Albania, in general, is a country we want to return to one day, especially to do some through-hiking (sans kids!).