I’m in a carpet souk at an Old Bazaar in the mountain town of Krujë in Albania buying a beautiful handmade table runner in the traditional style of Shqipëri, and an armful of gorgeous woven table coasters, all for less than €40.
When I don’t haggle on the price with the husband and wife who own this shop, they seem perplexed. They gesture at a bowl near their till full of “hide”, Albanian fruit that looks like an olive but tastes like an apple mixed with a date. I thank them and take one; they shake their heads, and pour all 250g of the fruit into a bag and give the whole lot to me. They sigh contentedly, satisfied that I am leaving with my money’s worth.
Three things are calling me back to this fascinating country in the Balkans: the history, the food and the people. This is a country of 2.6 million Shqiptarët, an equal mix of Muslim and Christian who have a long history of peaceful coexistence. Albania, aka Shqipëri, borders Greece, Montenegro, Kosovo and North Macedonia, with a coastline that hugs the Adriatic Sea in the north and the Ionian Sea in the south.
It’s this southern coast that got some viral prominence in the summer of 2023, when TikToker @thetravelmum called the island beach of Ksamil, accessible by ferry from Corfu in Greece, “The Maldives of Europe”. Multiple online sites picked it up and suddenly it seemed everyone was talking about Albania and its Riviera-style coastline as the new Instagrammable destination.
But Albania is so much more than a comparison to another destination; this is a holiday for history lovers, the curious and the open-minded.
There are the murals and mosques of the capital, Tirana; the fact that their prime minister, Edi Rama, is also an artist and painter; the stray dogs and the animal charities that care for them; the hiking in the Albanian Alps; the striking blues of the Bovilla Reservoir; the handmade carpets in the Old Bazaar at Krujë; the seafood at Vlorë; the architecture of the Unesco World Heritage Site of the hillside town Berat; the crystal-clear water and pebbled beaches at Dhërmi; and the burek, salcë kosi, and rakia all over. And the cakes. Oh my, the cakes.
The Shqiptarët have been invaded, conquered and colonised throughout history, most notably by the Roman Byzantine empire and the Ottoman empire (for 500 years), the Italian fascists and the Nazis. At the end of the second world War, in 1945, the Albanian communist revolutionary and politician Enver Hoxha and his intensely isolationist communist regime came to power and stayed there until his death in 1985.
During the Hoxha dictatorship, Albania was an isolated and shut-off state. No one came in, no one came out. Travel within the country for Albanians was restricted, and people who spoke up against the regime simply disappeared.
One very visual legacy of this regime is the thousands of bunkers that are found scattered across the entire nation – these were designed for the people of Albania to defend the country from nuclear attack, which Hoxha felt was imminent. He built an enormous secret underground bunker for himself, his family and the political elite. It’s to the north of Tirana’s city centre, now a museum called Bunk’Art (https://bunkart.al/) which is a recommended visit to understand the regime, although be warned – it is creepy.
For a literal overview of the city of Tirana, you can take a cable car up to the top of Dajti Mountain on the Dajti Ekspres Cable Car (dajtiekspres.com), just a short drive from the Bunk’Art Museum. It costs €14 per person and takes about 15 minutes each way. On a clear day you can see over the whole of Tirana, and right out to the coastline to the port city of Durrës.
On the Tirana Free Walking Tour (tourtirana.com) led by our informative and charming young guide, Aurora, we take in Skanderbeg Square, the Et’hem Bey Mosque, Enver Hoxha Pyramid, the Mother Teresa statue at the Orthodox Cathedral, and the city centre house where Hoxha lived. I ask Aurora what it’s like to be a young person in Tirana; she says she loves feeling safe to walk anywhere at any time, and worries about being able to afford her rent in the city due to recent inflation.
Along the walking tour trail, we pass a few of Hoxha’s bunkers and a piece of the Berlin Wall, a gift from the German people to the Albanians, now displayed in central Tirana.
“Albanian people are still affected by what happened during that time in our country,” says Aurora. “My parents were not pro the system, and they feel much better now that they have more job opportunities, freedom of choice, freedom of speech and freedom to move to other cities within Albania and to places outside of Albania.”
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The bumpy road of transition from communist regime to democracy is beautifully described by Albanian academic Lea Ypi in her 2021 book Free. Lea was 10 years old in 1989 when the Iron Curtain fell and she describes the cognitive turnabout she had to make as a young girl when everything she had been brought up to believe was revealed to be not at all the whole truth. It’s a must-read before your trip.
If you don’t have an appetite for history, the food culture is straightforwardly delicious. Food, of course, can be a creative expression for national identity, and the Albanians express theirs through a fabulous circular flaky pastry, stuffed with cheese or spinach or meat, known as burek; a labneh-style salted thick yoghurt called salcë kosi; and a blow-your-head-off fruit spirit called rakia.
Eating out at restaurants and cafes is affordable for locals and it’s a big part of the culture, and one of the joys of visiting. At Restaurant Era (era.al/en), you can taste Albania and the Balkans. Over the course of our meal we have crunchy cornbread with arya and goat cheese; juicy meatballs with pistachio and yoghurt; the “Renowned Yoghurt Casserole of Elbasan” (that’s the dish’s actual name on the menu); a spicy Kosovo sausage; a soda flatbread; and a baked feta cheese wrapped in thin filo, drizzled in honey and dappled with microgreens. Booking is essential, or get ready to queue.
Global Brooklyn has reached Tirana, with trendy speciality coffee shops such as Karamel popping up, but it’s the stalwarts such as Radio Bar and Vena that are arguably more interesting, and more comparable to Berlin’s coffee shops if you’re looking for a frame of reference. There is a discrete LGBTQ+ scene; Radio Bar and Bunker 1944 are considered the best gay-friendly bars in town.
At Hana’s Corner Cafe you’ll find the ubiquitous cinnamon roll next to a home-made burek, and this cafe doubles as a community space running wine tastings, poetry readings and vintage market pop-ups.
We meet local legend Geri, a diminutive woman who makes the best fresh pasta and burek in the city, according to locals, at her fresh pasta takeaway shop, Pasta Fresca on Rruga Komuna e Parisit. Buy some fresh lasagne to eat at your apartment or hotel, or grab a burek to take home in your travel luggage.
The ice cream at La Nocciola is out of this world but it’s the cakes in Tirana that really delight, with most bakeries staying open 7am-11pm. Nefeli, a bakery with three locations in the city, was one of our favourites; the pistachio cookies, the red velvet cake, the burek, the sticky orange and almond cake, and a trileçe cake – a milky caramel cake famous in the Balkans – and savoury pastries and sandwiches to have in or take away.
For a trip to the coast, head down south. At Dhërmi, where the locals go for their summer holidays, you’ll find beaches with marine blue water, pebbled beaches, and a view of Corfu from your sunbed.
The Dhërmi beachfront itself feels unfinished, and the view of the Ceraunian Mountains that overlooks this coastline is speckled with cranes. Right next to a chic beach bar is a literal hole in the ground, rubbish piling high inside it. We’re shocked by how much litter there is along the beachfront and the seemingly abandoned construction and building sites.
We hear rumours from expats of an Albanian mafia, and particularly about how they have a monopoly over the coastal development near the beaches, but it’s difficult to get to the truth of this over a short visit and some cursory Google searches.
In the north you’ll find the Albanian Alps, also known as the Accursed Mountains. If you can’t make it to Theth National Park for a proper hiking adventure, Bovilla Reservoir offers a sip of Albania’s stunning natural landscape. This man-made reservoir is part of Mount Dajt National Park, and there are tours that bring you up to the beginning of the popular, short trail, for a hint of the mountain landscape that reigns above Tirana, without having to travel too far outside of the capital city.
Nearby, at the town of Krujë, is the Derexhiku Bazaar. It feels custom built for tourists but it’s beautiful, and just keep walking down the main lane towards the Bazaar Mosque, built in 1533, and the last shop on your right, which has a proper weaving machine inside, is where you’ll find my husband and wife pals. Bring an extra suitcase for the full-sized carpets. They’re stunning.
Driving in Tirana is for adrenaline addicts only. The traffic is intense and roundabouts are treacherous. There is no city train or metro service, and public transport is limited to buses, and that goes for national trips too. Once outside of the city, you may meet less traffic and the infrastructure is not bad, but you could also easily end up on a dirt road on the way to a scenic spot, so organised day trips from Tirana might be a safer bet for the no-claims bonus on your rental car insurance policy.
Albania is not part of the EU, although they are working on it. The currency is the Albanian Lek. Cash is king outside of the capital of Tirana.
If you’re looking for somewhere familiar to stay in Tirana, the Marriott and Radisson have rooms starting from about €150 per night, or try Artistic Tirana Blloku to be in the boujie Blloku area, which is central but also full of lovely cafes, bars and shops. Ryanair flies indirectly from Dublin to Tirana with a layover in Stockholm. Alternatively, fly to Luton and then onwards from Luton to Tirana on Wizz Air.
