Crossroads to the Adriatic - Tirana to Shkoder - 19 Apr 2023

 

Crossroads to the Adriatic - Shkoder, Albania

Travel from Tirana to Shkoder

19 Apr 2023

City bus with 2 bending points! Ginormous!!!  

Up at 6:30am and down for our last breakfast in Tirana.  There was another OAT group there.  We talked to some of them & explained we were leaving & not in their group.  One grandmother & granddaughter had just arrived & the airlines had lost their luggage.  So sad!  Had another coffee issue, the young girl bartender couldn't understand why I didn't like the "chewy" American coffee!!!  Management made her make another pot!  Geez!  Back upstairs to finish packing & on the road by 9am.  Uneventful drive - not much traffic.  Jan said she had experienced a horrible traffic jam yesterday, but we sailed right on.   Before we left the city we passed an extremely long city bus!  Had 2 bending points.  Never seen anything that big!  Otherwise, just mostly flat terrain with mountains in the far distance.

Made a stop at a small pottery studio.  Run by a husband & wife (Vasili, the husband was not at home unfortunately).  They did everything from digging their own clay, designing, cooking, decorating, & selling.  She showed us how they prepared the clay after digging it once a year.  She made a pot for us on a pottery wheel & told us the story of how they had met when he came to do a class on pottery where she was in school studying painting.  She was invited in to paint him while he worked & fell in love!  Too sweet.  He had been adopted & sent to school in Italy to study the making of pottery.  Their son was piddling in the business, but his Mom didn't seem too impressed with his artistic ability (see the strange head above).  It was interesting.  When she invited us to try our hand at it, we all said no, we didn't want to get dirty!!!  I bought a small fridge magnet that she had painted.

As we left, we passed a group of men that were walking down the street. Erion said they were going to attend a funeral. He had us take a picture of one of them that was in traditional garb.

After a very short drive, we arrived at Mrizi i Zanave Agroturizem.  It was a self sufficient farm at an agricultural location that had previously been used as a prison during communist rule.  As we walked up to the working compound, it started pouring.  Luckily we could run into the cheese making area to get out of the rain & listen to the history & working description.

The compound was made up of several separate buildings, each divided into individual uses.  We toured the cheese making & storage, the liquor/jams area & the meat curing/smoking.  It was all very clean & well organized.  They even bottled & labeled their own concoctions.   

We headed down to the wine cellars & tasting room.  We didn't get to have a real tasting, but since we'll have lunch, they assured us we'll get to taste some with our meal.  We loved their hand made tables.  When we headed back up, we found the skies had cleared & it was a beautiful day!!

Really cool looking chairs in their meeting room.

They showed us their meeting room & their wonderfully innovative desks.  Very impressive.

We finished up the tour in the sunshine through the fields & a small distillery.  There were walking paths with flagstones that had obviously been laid with loving care (not from the prison days!!!). 

We went inside the restaurant to find a completely packed dining room with lots of tables inside & out.  The outdoor area was not being used due to the recently ended rain, so the inside was mobbed.  There was a 3 piece ensemble was playing.  The guy playing the violin also played the piano.  They were mostly playing classical sounding pieces although some must have been folk songs in a calming arrangement.  Erion had warned us that there would be a lot of food & he was not exaggerating!  Even the dessert came in 4 separate courses!  Including an ice cream topped with freshly ground coffee beans that they circulated to grind directly into your bowl.  Jan was not happy about that at all!  She hates the smell of coffee!  The appetizer courses included so many locally grown vegetables prepared in a variety of ways.  It was all delicious.  The meat dishes were all using locally raised & butchered animals.  It was quite impressive.  Erion said the majority of the crowd were local Albanians out to enjoy the bounty.

Multiple Spanish Sparrows

Spanish Sparrow

After stuffing ourselves, we went outside to look at the live animals, feed the goats & settle our stomachs.

After about a 40 minute drive, we arrived in Shkoder at our hotel, Hotel Colossal.  The city was clean & bright & looked new & touristy.  

It was easy to get checked in & settled in our rooms.  Nice, bright clean room (I'd forgotten to take pictures, this is from the internet, but very accurate).  Best of all was a balcony overlooking the pedestrian street in front of us.  

Erion gave us about an hour & a half to get settled into our rooms & then it was time to meet for our Orientation walk.  Basically to give us an idea of things around our hotel so that we could get out on our own & feel comfortable.  He showed us the closest Pharmacy, ATM, & grocery store.  Gave us a chance to stretch our legs & get an idea about this city.  Shkoder is the 5th most populated city (135,000) and has 2200 years of recorded history.  It's known for it's religious diversity & a popular stop enroute to the Albanian Alps.

We found a large map of Albania & a chart of the Albanian alphabet.  Erion used that to show us where we've been & where we'll be driving to meet up with the main group when we head to Dubrovnik in 2 days.  Then he pronounced all the 36 letters of their alphabet for us.  Oh my.  There are 8 double letters and 2 E's and 2 R's.  Very confusing!  Most of the double letters are impossible for our tongues, like nj???  They string way too many consonants together.  Most of their names won't stick in my mind because of all the consonants.  I kept telling him I would sell him some vowels!!  Actually Renata had mentioned on both our phone call & email with him that that was one of the reasons that Albanian guides were not replaced with anyone else - no one else can speak/read/write Albanian!!!  

Back in the room, we left our curtains open & enjoyed the balmy air from outside.  It was a beautiful evening.  Sunset very late - almost 10pm.  We enjoyed a nice relaxing evening in our room - both playing on our computers & relaxing.  Still stuffed from the enormous late lunch.  We finally shut the curtains & started hearing a strange noise.  Found a HUGE grasshopper.  Biggest we'd ever seen! Got rid of him - didn't need that as a room mate!!  Ready for our last full day in Albania!!  Stay tuned!