Wednesday, April 17 – transit from Shkoder to Tirana

I’m back on the bus (Gus; apologies to Paul Simon!) this morning; traveling to Albania’s capital, Tirana. According to the online timetable, a bus to Tirana departs every 30 minutes from the stop in the city center where I was dropped off on the ride from Kotor a couple days ago. The hotel check out time is 10:30, so I’m thinking I’ll grab the 11am departure. A nice leisurely morning.

It’s raining though, and since the bus stop has no cover, I decided to just wait out the weather at the hotel and do some work on a journal entry. My wait wasn’t long. By 11:15 I was on my way to the bus stop.

However, 11:30 came and went, with no departure. We eventually hit the road around noon. I think the lateness was due to the driver waiting for the bus to fill up with passengers. It was 2/3 full when we left. The trip took 2 1/2 hours and cost 400 lek.

The regional bus “station” in Tirana is again just a stop on a main thoroughfare; in this case located outside of the city center. Traffic in the area was brutal, and there were no taxis around, so I just decided to walk to my hotel (located in the center). That took 90 minutes.

The walk wasn’t very photogenic, but I do have one image to share…

I did go out for a little walk around the neighborhood, no photos though unfortunately. Nothing really popped out at me.

Thursday, April 18 – Tirana

As you can probably tell from yesterday’s write up, my enthusiasm has waned a bit as this trip concludes. And that has continued this morning, but I’m still going to head out and roam about some.

But first…

I started the day with motivation issues, but still managed to do 22k steps worth of wandering!

Albania Notes

• The population of Albania is 2.8 million. The largest city is Tirana at 400k. The population of Shkoder is 88k.
• For not being a super big city, the traffic in Tirana is ugly.
• I think my choice of places to visit in Albania was not the best. Going to the coast or the mountains would have been better. Based on my schedule though, and preferred method of transit, these two inland cities were my best options.
• As in most of the eastern European places I’ve visited this winter, there is a lot of smoking in Albania.
• The people I encountered here were very nice. An example: I stopped at a kiosk in Shkoder to buy a postcard. The cost was 20 lek (crazy cheap), but the smallest denomination bill I had was 500 lek (~$5). The vendor didn’t have change, yet offered to just let me take the card and come back later when I had change to pay him. Very generous, but I didn’t take him up on it. I did come back the next day though, when I had change, and bought the card.