Albania has impressive alpine mountain ranges and equally impressive canyons. Photo / Getty Images
For a trip with something for every type of traveller, hop in a car for a border-to-border road trip in Albania, writes Annaliese Smith.
Having friends with diverse interests is a blessing until it comes to planning a holiday. Since my primary interest is travel, I’m often the instigator of trips and you’ll usually find me in one group chat or another trying to coordinate pool loungers, fine diners, water babies, history buffs, hikers, bikers and my partner, who, when quizzed on his ideal holiday doesn’t care where, doesn’t care when, he just wants to be on a jet ski.
I was in this scenario in June of last year when I excitedly discovered a destination with something for everyone: Albania.
Tucked between Greece and Montenegro, this small Balkan country boasts 362km of Adriatic coastline dotted with glitzy resort towns and stretches of uninterrupted shore that rival its southern neighbour. Head 150km inland and you’ll find the North Macedonian or Kosovan borders, but not before wading through medieval hilltop towns, alpine mountain ranges and startlingly blue rivers that carve their way through equally impressive canyons. Combine this with its affordability and compactness, and it’s the perfect destination and everything is really close together. Something for everyone, wouldn’t you agree?
My friends, initially, did not. Albania has had an unfortunate and, in many ways, unfair reputation for crime since its Soviet era. A social media boom in 2021 starring the aforementioned coasts and canyons started to mend this image and put Albania on the tourism map, yet my friends remained hesitant. A few weeks and a lot of convincing later, we were flying to Corfu (the closest major airport to Albania’s southern tip), with a cobalt blue MG ZS rental car waiting for us across the border.
We arrived on a balmy Saturday evening, took the ferry to the port town Sarande, the gateway to the Albanian Riviera, and collected our rental the following morning. Our MG only set us back £60 per day ($138), but if we were to do it again we would opt for something cheaper. Horror stories online about the state of the roads in Albania, particularly those around the northern mountains meant we opted for an SUV. Yet, we found infrastructure projects had paved the roads to the most popular villages, so a large, raised car wasn’t necessary. The real kicker for us, however, came at the petrol station. Albania has some of the most expensive fuel in the world due to high taxes and an almost total reliance on imports. It’s been a cause for concern among local motorists for more than a decade and certainly took us by surprise.
Regardless, we were ecstatic to get on the road. Leaving Sarande was a nightmare, as it often is in old cities (ancient Greek ones, in this case), but eventually we were cruising along the Albanian Riviera. This part of the country garners many nicknames, including the Maldives of Europe, for its clear blue waters, but it’s almost Elysian in its beauty. We’d opted to skip the busiest resorts of Ksamil and Vlore for a town called Dhermi. Its white houses sprawl up the cliffs of the Ceraunian mountains and the sun drizzles back down. With the temperature easily breaking 30C, there was only one thing to do: swim. Racing to the pebble beach speckled with green sea-glass, we spent the day jumping off the pier, eating ice cream and watching the sun set from the balcony of a pizza restaurant near our apartment. It was as close to a perfect beach day as you can get.
Although we didn’t take the opportunity to explore the 14th-century Monastery of Saint Mary or the Mill Trail while in Dhermi, one of its most iconic experiences is in the drive itself. Heading north out of town we joined the SH8 Coastal Rd – the premier scenic drive down the Riviera and one worth travelling for. Heading up through the mountain passes offers a spectacular view over the Adriatic with shiny white villages glinting along the shore. The occasional 1970s Soviet bunker mark excellent viewpoints and bring a brutalist quirk to the party in a way that only Albania can.
This remarkable clash of histories and cultures is what makes Albania special. It’s in the cuisine that is reminiscent of Italian, Greek and Turkish and yet remains distinctly Albanian, or the architecture which ranges from medieval to brutalist to novelty (there are a lot of boat and castle-shaped buildings on the highways for some reason) but still washes out Albanian. Our whirlwind few days in the central Unesco World Heritage towns Berat and Gjirokaster, with their hilltop castles, offered this atmosphere in bucketloads, but Shiroke, a small lakeside town next to the major northern city of Shkoder, typified it.
We’d been staying in a lakeside B&B, Hotel Bella Vista, on the shores of the cross-border Lake Shkodra, which borrows its name from the city. My partner and I decided to explore the Montenegrin border towns and optimistically ambled around some watersports shops in the hopes they had bikes to rent. All we got was unsure headshaking until one woman ominously pointed out of town, “Do you know the abandoned building?” We did; it was impossible to miss. “Try there,” she said.
The Art Deco concrete structure rises out of the lake in elaborate tiers and pillars. A skylight design that looks like a chocolate box and a total lack of windows sees it cast strange shadows across the small island it sits on. We wandered towards it, unsure of what we could possibly find until, sure enough, a row of bikes chained to the fence came into view. The friendly owner of the bikes, Goni, happily rented them to us for five euros ($10) for the day. Bike rental clearly wasn’t popular at the time, as he had to beat the lock off the chain with a wrench, but he was determined we would have our lakeside bicycle adventure. Cycling back through Shiroke, we passed our friends still swimming in the lake below and continued along the hillside trail that hugged the shore and led through quaint, storybook villages. It seems that since our visit, Goni’s business has boomed, with a successful lakeside restaurant and bike rental service. He now also offers access to the eccentric concrete structure, which, it turns out, is an abandoned hotel project known as the Stralaus Freudenberg.
The final few days of our border-to-border adventure were spent in Theth and Tirana, a whiplash of wide-open mountains and buzzing city streets. It’s hard to put into words how beautiful the Albanian Alps are, and the Valbone Valley hike (which is achievable for novices if you avoid the extreme temperatures) is hailed as one of the best in Europe. It bursts with wildflowers as Tirana bursts with energy and a quiet charm.
People tend to find Albania’s capital to be hit or miss, and while it isn’t the most showstopping city in Europe, it has a rumbling undercurrent that eventually sweeps you off your feet – a little nudge that delivers you from sprawling parks to the warm embrace of a trendy bar. These two places are somehow just three hours away from each other by car. In fact, you can drive the entire length of the country, sweeping up the glittering Riviera, medieval castles, lakes and mountains on your way, in just nine hours. We took a leisurely nine days to see as much as possible, and it was like traversing a world’s worth of countries, with a little something for everyone.
The writer travelled at their own expense.