It is very warm here in Tirana. It is very much a
Mediterranean city. I knew that but I guess it being formerly one of the
countries behind the Iron Curtain, I had something else in mind. Those days are
over. As an organized country, Albania has had one king (Zogu, say zog) and one
Communist dictator and now as a supposed Socialist democracy. There are about 1
million people in Tirana representing about 1/3 of the country’s population.
The average salary is about 250 Euros. Private individual automobile has only
been legal since 1991. I am missing a lot but that is most of my take away from
this morning’s city tour. We have signed up for the afternoon’s 2pm to evening,
$71pp optional tour to Kruje. I believe the guide said, it is a UNESCO world
heritage site. I believe she said it is a medieval city critical to
withstanding the Ottoman Empire siege. It should entail a drive through the
country side, a walking tour, a museum and dinner.
The hotel was very quiet overnight. It is very quiet in our
room. We are overlooking the main boulevard or avenue of Tirana in the busy
center of the city and it is very busy outside, but very quiet in here. It is
excellent! We slept very well even with crappy flat pillows and a mattress as
hard as a pallet. We were both just happy to finally lie down!
Clay woke up first and woke me early so I could take my
time. We were down to the breakfast buffet by 7:30am. It was fine. Nothing
extraordinary. The hotel is again quite nice and the restaurant was
indoor/outdoor around a garden courtyard that also housed a pool with a tennis
court in back.
We met the group in the lobby at 9am for the tour. We are 16
right now. In Dubrovnik, we will add 20 more people to that group. That will
surely not be a happy day. We were not the last 2 to arrive. There was a man
from Australia that came in minutes after us evidently. Anyway, that was the
missing 3rd person that was assumed to be a member of our party. The
group will apparently have another welcome meeting in Dubrovnik for the 20 that
will join us so Gabriella tells us we’ll have another chance. I expect to know
everything I needed to know by then!
We drove around the main part of town, all within easy
walking distance this morning and saw the important buildings and monuments and
visited a mosque and a museum. We were turned loose right before noon. Clay and
I walked across the street to check out the Communist checkpoint relics assembled
on the corner and then down to the twin towers building. We had lunch there. We
shared some kind of cornmeal pita and doner sandwich with fries and a Coke
Zero. Then we walked to the next corner to an ice cream stand and got cones and
walked back. It is very hot without a cloud in the sky and Clay had to change
from shorts to pants this morning because of the mosque visit. So we are back
at the hotel now where he changed and got rid of his socks.
Tirana is a very clean and pleasant city even though it is
crowded and busy. We like it. Most of the signage is in English so that helps
us. They seem willing to accept Euros, Dollars and Leks equally everywhere
we’ve been. Too bad in a way that we leave in the morning.
We went to Kruje for the afternoon. We drove through Frushe
Kruje on our way. George W. Bush is the only sitting American president to
visit Albania and for reasons that are still not understood, his entourage made
an unscheduled visit in this village between Tirana and Kruje. W’s watch was
stolen there and recovered and returned about an hour later. He went into a
Kafe Bar and bought a coffee. The Kafe Bar owner renamed his establishment
George W. Bush. The town erected a statue of W across the street from there. I
believe the guide said it was near where his watch was stolen. Sometimes life
is stranger than fiction.
We went up a crazy switchback-filled road up a mountain with
a lot of other big buses to find our way to an arch over stairs through the
Panorama Bar Restaurant Hotel. We passed through and walked a most precarious
and slippery uneven narrow rock passage through and old bazaar to get inside
the fortifications. There is a big newly constructed museum there but this is
not where we went. We visited what they called an ethnographic museum. In
reality, it was what we would call an historic house museum. I think it was
over 250 years old and generations of a single wealthy family had lived there
until Communism. I don’t know who did it, or how everything was preserved from
then to now. I believe the special guide we had said the last of the family
stopped living there during the 1970’s. It was interesting. We had to walk back
down the slippery uneven steep stones to get back down and had an hour to cross
the bazaar to the restaurant for dinner. I recruited our guide for the day to
find a small Albanian flag symbol patch for 1 Euro, only to misplace it! Oh
well. Tomorrow we leave Albania for good, so that is a lost patch opportunity.
The one that got away! Dinner was 5 course in a spectacular setting as the sun
set. Cream of chicken soup, salad, cheese & spinach pie with something like
queso fundido on the side, main course of veal steak and a cheese filled ground
beef patty with potatoes and something like tzatziki, followed by a dessert of
something like rice pudding and slices of apples, oranges and apricots. They
served everyone a cold bottle of water and a big glass of red or white wine.
They offered coffee, tea or cappuccino afterwards. It was a lot of food! It was
mostly pretty tasty too. We liked the wine and Clay paid to also have a Korca
beer. It was a good afternoon and we got to see a bit more of Albania on the drive.
Albania is inexpensive. Everyone we ran into from the cab
driver at the airport to now spoke some English so that made it easy. Signage
is in English almost everywhere. The Albanians seem to love Americans, so there
is that. There is a lot more here to recommend Albania that I had thought and I’m
sorry we are not spending more time here. Tomorrow I get to put a new pin in the
country travel map, Montenegro. It will be a long day on the bus tomorrow and I
hope it’s a good one.
Photo Slideshow
Photo Slideshow
