Albania

Albania

  • Capital: Tirana
  • Territorial area: 28 748 Km2
  • Population: 3 029 778 
  • Official Language: Albanian
  • Currency: Lek
  • Timezone: UTC +1

     We have been in Albania for 4 days, practically always on the coast and we really liked the South part, especially down from Vlore.

     In the North the country changes, with the coast much less pristine an picturesque, there is a lot of buildings and some polution, from our point of view the north is almost the opposite of the south.

     The country is very mountainous, especially in the interior and in the South, the beaches of the ” Albanian riviera ” are very beautiful, with few people and blue water. To reach the beaches it is almost always necessary to take great descents and often by dirt roads.

     We entered the country through Greece, and our first stop was at Blue Eye, which is a very special spring with turquoise blue water and is one of the main tourist attractions in Albania.

     Then we did the whole coast to Montenegro,. In the South, the beaches are absolutely stunning, better than the ones we saw in Greece, because they have much less garbage.

     Albania has only started to be a tourist destination for a few years ago, which means that in many areas you still do not feel the impact of tourism, there are however some tourist areas like Vlore and Sarande.

     The northern half of the country is very different from the southern half, the more we climb the more poverty we saw, we found a lot of people picking up garbage, everywhere, even on the main roads, and a lot of people selling things by the roadside, like food and orher things.

     We did not go to any big supermarket, but in the small establishments the prices were cheaper than in Portugal, sometimes however they try make exchange rates higher that in the reality to take the money of the tourists with prices different from those practiced for the locals.

     We saw many campers, especially because it was summer and Albania is a country of passage to Greece and starting to became a popular tourist destination.

     Something that can be seen in Albania is the amount of Mercedes and semi-new high-end cars on the roads, cars with Albanian license plates and that do not fit the general situation that we have seen in the country, this is probably due to the great corruption and “mafia” that exists in the country. We did not see anything special that would lead us to say this, except for the large amount of cannabis in the country, and the cars, but with the many people we spoke to, in that part of the Balkans, they all told us the same thing, that Albania was a country with much corruption and mafia.

     The roads are bad, except for some recently  stretches along the coast, however in most parts of the country the roads have many holes and there are only one or two motorways.

     We always felt safe.

 

Albania’s Official Tourist Site

Somo photos of Albania

Articles about albania

Blue eye -

 ´´Blue Eye ou Syri Kalter em albanês é umas nascente natural, que fica a 20 Km de Sarande, na Albânia. A nascente vem debaixo da terra, com uma enorme pressão e tem um azul muito bonito, em zonas mais claro, outras mais escuro...''

related articles

if you have any doubt, or if you want to say us anything, just leave a comment here or send us an email to worldonmyway@worldonmyway.com


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *