Tirana (Albania): A Capital with an Extraordinary Vibe

Planning a trip to Albania?

– Plan to buy a SIM card for internet access

– Book your activities in advance with Civitatis

– Protect yourself with insurance offering good coverage. For example, with Heymondo (5% discount by using this link)

After 3 months in Montenegro, it was with heavy hearts that we had to leave the country to visit its neighbor: Albania. We decided to spend the first few weeks in Tirana, just to get a feel for the country. Fortunately, for a capital city, Tirana is extraordinarily full of “good vibes.” We really feel great there.

Sorry it took me so long to post the new travel diaries. I’m tired and swamped. Luckily, this long weekend is letting me get back to writing.

Part 1: Travel Journal
Part 2: Practical Tips

Part 1: Travel Journal

Podgorica – Tirana on a nearly empty bus, it’s been done (see the article). Thinking we’d arrive after curfew, we booked a hotel 5 minutes’ walk from the bus terminal (Hotel Dilo). But we actually arrived 1 hour before curfew, and life seems to go on a bit after 8 PM anyway, so we worried for nothing.

Anyway, our first encounter with an Albanian in Albania goes really well: the hotel receptionist goes out of his way to order us two pizzas even though he doesn’t understand English. 2 pizzas + 2 drinks delivered = 6 euros. We pay in euros and the delivery guy even gives us change in local currency (we didn’t have time to withdraw money). Life suddenly seems so much easier.

The next day, we explore the neighborhood around the hotel. Between smiling faces, people who speak English perfectly, ATMs with no fees, and cafés still packed, we feel like we’ve stepped back into a pre-Covid world, where everything was easy and carefree.

Here, they seem to have a lot of seafood, barbecue, and a sort of canteen spots reserved for white-collar workers, where there are prepared dishes. You just point at what you want. It’s cool because menus are rarely translated into English.

We each buy a SIM card for under 10€ and move into our apartment, where we’ll stay for 3 weeks.

Our apartment

Our apartment (Booking link, €25/night) isn’t in the city center, but since all neighborhoods in Tirana seem lively, we don’t feel out of the way. On the contrary, we benefit from more attractive prices, both for accommodation and restaurants.

I’m sharing the official photos because the apartment looks exactly like this.

Nice surprise: in addition to the dining table where JB can work, there’s another desk in the bedroom with a proper office chair. That’s great because my calls have been multiplying lately, and I’m tired of having to sit on the bed for them. At least here, I have a separate desk, and above all, an ergonomic chair.

Careful, tap water is NOT drinkable! It’s too high in lead. We can buy 15L of water at the supermarket for about 10 LEK

At first, the bedroom was too cold (the reverse-cycle AC wasn’t working well), but after asking the owner (who lives right across) for a solution, we got a space heater. Our working conditions are ideal (except for the internet speed, which is a bit lacking). The apartment is super nicely decorated (Mad Men style), fully equipped (washing machine, towel warmer, kitchen…). And above all…

Home Delivery

There’s an app that delivers food to your door!!!! BABOON. Partially translated into English.

We didn’t do it in Budva, Montenegro, and had to cook every night because Montenegrin addresses weren’t very precise (we got deliveries more often with GLOVO in Podgorica, but the options were limited).

Here, addresses aren’t very precise either, but we have a reference point for delivery (the café next door). There are many more restaurants that deliver, more cuisine choices. Some restaurants are almost gourmet. The delivery guys all speak a bit of English and call me on my Albanian number a few minutes before delivery. Payment is in cash upon delivery.

Here are the restaurants I really like on Baboon:

• Fresco for their tuna tartare. A real explosion of flavor.
• Chakra : Indian restaurant. With a few Thai dishes

At noon, we can go to a restaurant normally. Hallelujah! Finally, we no longer have to cook. I couldn’t take it anymore!

There are no Korean or Vietnamese restaurants. Japanese restaurants are OK, the fish is fresh, but they struggle with rice, which is never cooked correctly.

Lounges vs. restaurants

It’s not always easy to spot restaurants on the street. Albanians spend their whole day in lounges and cafés. The lounges are the size of a restaurant, but they barely sell any food (or just sandwiches). You should avoid lounges even if the chairs are super stylish and comfortable because it seems there’s no designated smoking area. It stinks! I don’t know how we used to do it when everything was smoking, but we can’t stand that smell anymore.

There are no menus outside restaurants, so you have to trust your gut and just go for it. Even though half the population is Muslim, not all restaurants are halal. And even when they are halal, I feel like it’s not clearly indicated either. Sometimes you notice the absence of pork on the menu.

Albanian cuisine is heavily influenced by Italian (and Greek) cuisine, so you can find cured sausage without any problem (I mention this because one of the things that frustrated me in Turkey was the impossibility of finding cured sausage ahaahha).

Finally, if we didn’t see so many minarets in the city, we wouldn’t have guessed there were so many Muslims in Albania. No one wears a veil, and we don’t hear prayers.

My favorite restaurants

You eat better in Albania than in Montenegro, that’s for sure. In Montenegro, they are too influenced by Italian cuisine, whereas Albania offers a perfect blend of Italian and Greek cuisine. Even in the hole-in-the-wall places in the middle of nowhere, they deliver. They also have plenty of seafood, all fresh, so they eat a lot of raw seafood. Their salad is always perfectly dressed, unlike in Montenegro or Italy, where you have to dress your own salad (something I can never do well). I feel alive again here, it’s crazy! For someone as picky as me, finding good food at a reasonable price is heaven.

Here are a few restaurants I really like. Many are near my apartment. 1000LEK = 8€

• Oberon Bar: it’s an upscale Japanese-fusion restaurant. The prices are high for Albania, but compared to the quality, it’s like getting gourmet cuisine for the price of a French bistro. I particularly love their sashimi of the day (200g minimum) and their soups, which are made with complete respect for the art of Japanese cuisine. You’ll find important elements and codes of traditional Japanese cuisine. Since I took a Masterclass on this topic, I’ve been able to appreciate this type of cuisine. Expect around 2200LEK per person

• Ejona : very popular and busy. A 15-minute walk from the main square in the city center. I don’t know if everything is organic, but it seems like it. The menu changes regularly. The waiter loves to list all the ingredients of each dish. It’s delicious, fresh, and it seems like they were designed by a nutritionist because there’s a harmony in the ingredients and their quantities. Expect around 700LEK per person

• Te Poli : I don’t know why more people don’t go there. The restaurant is a bit hidden and only has terrace tables. However, everything is fresh. Here, they have a habit of eating raw shrimp, marinated in an olive oil and lemon sauce. It’s delicious and addictive. In seafood restaurants like this one, fresh fish is always clearly visible, and you can choose the fish you want. Expect around 1500LEK per person.

• Kledi Restorant/Piceri : a kind of canteen with prepared dishes. You can order à la carte or point to the dish you want through the glass. Their stuffed eggplant is amazing, and their salmon dish is too. Expect between 500 and 700LEK per person

• Spaghetti House & Fish: not far from the bus terminal. Everything is simple but good. Expect between 500 and 700LEK per person

The locals gave me two other unmissable addresses:

• Era “Blloku” : seafood
• Grill House Greek Original Souvlaki : the souvlaki is a must-try (a kind of skewers)

A great vibe

It might be linked to our perception after a year of Covid restrictions, but we find that Tirana has an extraordinary atmosphere.

There are good vibes here. I feel extremely good.

For a capital city, the air is unusually clean. Walking is unpleasant during rush hour because of the traffic jams, but apart from that, pollution is almost non-existent. We feel safe.

Albania, from an architectural standpoint, looks a lot like Hanoi. I took a picture of our building and sent it to my family. Everyone thought I was in front of my godmother’s building in Hanoi. ahahahha. If Cuba lets me relive my childhood (the 90s in Hanoi), Tirana makes me feel like I’m living in Hanoi, my hometown. I sometimes catch familiar smells, buildings that seem familiar, even though I’m 10,000km away. Maybe that’s why I love Tirana so much.

You can see the mountains in the distance, some still snow-capped in April. And yet, it’s not as oppressive as in La Paz, Bolivia, for example, because the “bowl”, the valley, is not polluted.

The buildings are not the most beautiful in the world. You can feel the years of communism. There is still too much concrete, everything looks disorganized, they clearly lack taste (and architects), but this country exudes an incredibly positive energy. I’m surprised I like a capital city this much. Even JB, who hates big cities, wants to stay in Tirana more than I do.

I don’t know why some comments are so negative about Albania, but the people here are extremely kind.

They stare at us a lot, but often it’s to anticipate our needs and offer their help, always in impeccable English. You can feel they’re very happy to see us. Those who speak less English want to chat with us, ask us questions, even if they have to dig deep into their English vocabulary. All this touches us enormously. Everywhere we go, there is only kindness.

Bunk’Art 2

The only place in Tirana that exudes extremely negative energy is this bunker. During the decades of extremely harsh communism, the regime’s paranoia about the outside world drove it to build 170,000 bunkers across the country. So much so that you can see one at almost every turn when you drive out of the city.

In Tirana, there are 2 bunkers you can visit. One in the mountains, far from the capital, and the second is right next to the main square, surrounded by many ministries. It’s supposed to be a real bunker, i.e., invisible from the outside, but they’ve added an entrance and exit for tourists. Normally, it should be accessible via a secret triple-layered entrance, permanently guarded, and connected to the Ministry of the Interior.

Inside the bunker, there are several rooms spread across 3 corridors. In each room, we’re shown how the “hard core” communist regime was established, the secret police methods, the torture techniques, … It’s a bunker, so the air circulates poorly, the rooms are dark and gloomy. I didn’t like it at all.

The rooms reserved for the minister are the nicest, and super well-decorated.

There’s a story about a hidden microphone in a broom, which was brought into the Italian embassy to spy on the 6 members of an Albanian family who had taken refuge there. The broom was brought in every day by the cleaning lady, without ever being discovered.

I’m glad we didn’t make the trip to see the other bunker in the suburbs. It would have killed me.

Sheshi Skënderbej

Right next to it is the main square with a statue of Scanderbeg, a 15th-century Albanian lord considered the Albanian national hero for his resistance to the Ottoman Empire.

This square is huge. Come with sunglasses because the tiles reflect the sun’s rays, and I was completely dazzled without my sunglasses. I almost cried lol.

Right next to it is a beautiful mosque, unfortunately under renovation, an opera house, and a museum.

All the ministries around the square still keep the communist style.

A bit further is a modern Orthodox church. The paintings inside are not finished but follow the ancient style of paintings you see all over the Balkans.

Right across from the church is “House of Leaves”, a former maternity hospital turned torture site & base for the secret police. It’s too much this concentration of bad vibes lol.

Luckily we have an appointment for a massage at the spa next door.

The 1.5-hour massage costs 4000LEK. It really feels great, especially after our skiing exploits a few weeks ago. I highly recommend it. The spa is called La Vie en Rose. The neighborhood around the spa is very lively. Excellent place to chill, grab a coffee, or go shopping. I found moisturizers at l’Erbolario, an Italian brand.

Walking towards the spa, then towards our apartment, we discover themed streets like in Vietnam. There’s a street with only notaries and lawyers, then a street with only clothing shops.

The rest of our adventure in Albania, is right here

Part 2: Practical Tips

Budget

• Lodging:
  • Hôtel Dio (near the bus terminal): 40€/night
  • Third Floor’s Apartment: €25/night (Booking link)
• Taxi: between 400 LEK and 700 LEK (depending on traffic)
• Bunk’Art 2: 500 LEK/person
• Massage: 4,000 LEK for 1h30 at La vie en rose spa
• Restaurants: between 500 LEK and 2,000 LEK/person/meal

Links

All my articles about Albania are available here

For excursions, guided tours in Albania, check out Civitatis or Viator (by Tripadvisor) here.

My best addresses in Albania are on this custom Google Maps. You can also access it here