We had arrived in Tirana the previous evening and visited the World Headquarters of the Bektashi sect of Islam – and experienced our first thunderstorm and rain of an otherwise sunny and warm holiday – before a dinner experience at an out-of-town restaurant with a distinctly military theme, although the food was of a high (and non-military) quality.
Albania’s capital city is a combination of the modern and the recent past – vibrant new colourful constructions sit alongside relics of its communist history. We saw both in good measure in our walking tour on Day 7 of our holiday.
Our hotel was a short walk from Skanderbeg Square (above), the focal point of the city named after the national hero (born George Kastrioti), and in the morning we started there and walked first to Bunk’Art 2 (below), a nuclear bunker built during the Communist Era of Enver Hoxha and now a museum to the victims of communism and depicting the realities of life for Albanians under that regime.
We next paid a short visit to the iconic Tirana Pyramid, formerly a museum to Enver Hoxha, and past the Presidential Palace to the National Archaeological Museum, where we had a short tour before heading off for lunch.
Our short visit to Tirana over, it was time to make the relatively short journey to Kruja where we would spend the later part of the day and our last night in Albania before our flight home. I’ll put our Kruja visit onto a separate blog post in a day or two.
The China Penguin 