Devin's Travels: Tirana

Leaving Berat we made our way to the capital city of Tirana. Arriving at the "bus station", really just a random street corner as far as we could tell, we were forced to hop in a taxi for the short ride to the Tirana Hostel. We quickly got checked in and were delighted to finally find some laundry services so we set to work to get a load done. After getting settled in we set off to explore the city and spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering around and admiring the old communist buildings. That was how most of the afternoon was spent just wandering the streets of Tirana and admiring the old communist buildings that had been painted bright colours with interesting designs on after the communist rule had ended. They were quite interesting to see. After that we returned to the hotel for a brief period to hang our laundry up to dry. That evening we set off hoping to find the ever present walking street and to join the locals going for an evening stroll before dinner. However after wandering around for a bit we came to the conclusion that Tirana must have been too big to have a single walking street because although we saw hundreds of people out walking or sitting in parks we couldn't find a single walking street like we were used to. So after our short walk we just decided to find a place for dinner instead of searching some more. After dinner we proceeded to enjoy the night by sitting at one of the bars with seats in the middle of the pedestrian only road while having a few drinks.

The next day we started off by again doing a second load of laundry before heading out to see the city. While the laundry was being washed we decided to do the short walking tour recommended by Lonely Planet which takes you past several significant communist buildings. The first stop was a huge pyramid shaped building which used to contain the Enver Hoxha Museum (the communist ruler) although now it just seems empty and outside the pyramid is the Bell of Peace, a memorial to the country's post communist years. After that we headed by the newly rebuilt St Paul's Catholic Cathedral which was rebuilt when religion was finally allowed within the country again. Next we passed by the parliament buildings and a few statues en route to the Et'hem Bey Mosque which is one of only a handful of religious buildings that has survived from before 1900. Just across the street from the mosque is Sheshi Skenderbej which is a square in the heart of the city. In the middle of the square is an equestrian statue of Skanderbeg while surrounding the square are several nice palaces and other other government buildings. From here we left the walking tour to make our way up to a market that our hostel told us about and upon finding it we spent a few minutes wandering around it although it was fairly small and nothing too special. From here we returned to our hotel to hang our laundry up to dry before heading down towards the university complete with a statue of Mother Teresa. We then tried to make our way to the former palace of King Zogu but couldn't quite find it so we just ended up returning to the hotel to relax for a little bit before heading out to dinner.

The next morning we awoke and quickly packed up and headed off to a different "bus station", again just a random street somewhere, where we boarded a bus bound for Shkodra our last destination in Albania before entering Montenegro.