You can’t be an ‘influencer’ if only 20 people read your blog. Can you 🙂 ? I want to say this because what follows are only my views on the country just visited, and thankfully we all experience things in such different ways.

Tirana for me was a lovely surprise and a capital city that I could see most people enjoying, or maybe you have already enjoyed. Otherwise Albania, today, is, in my view, a country for the history buff and/or lovers of the great outdoors. Despite the dreamy beaches I dont think it is ready yet for commercial beach tourism. The infrastructure is either not there, or ( bang bang thrash thrash) is being built, or is not the taste that you would like. For this Albania needs another 3 years.

My pet subject, litter…. This is a real issue here. Even at some of the key tourist sites you are distracted by plastic water bottles, and how you will take the best photograph without revealing the ugly truth.

Food is another big draw for holiday makers and although the food was great I didn’t experience a distinctive Albanian cuisine, but more a mash up of Italian, Greek and Turkish….but with lots more salt! That doesn’t mean to say it doesn’t exist though.

A week isn’t enough time to know the people and the culture. The only thing that I venture is that the 2.8 million are very busy and you can’t count on too much conversation. Albanians are not instinctively smiley when they catch your eye, but then this could be read as introversion or a lack of interest in the influx of so many new foreigners. Politics and football were the two ice breakers with men, and English is widely spoken, but I didn’t speak with any Albanian women. A shame.

Religion doesn’t appear to be the biggest part of their lives ( but this could reflect only the places visited). Surprisingly there seemed to be more churches than mosques. No women seem to wear headscarves.

Albania is a cash only country ( apart from petrol stations) but then there are bank machines on every street corner. I have never been to a country with so many!

Birds are in cages everywhere. Albania clearly never received the memo !

The big plus is the mountain scenery which was more extensive than I had imagined. I knew that there wouldn’t be time to trek in the north where the real biggies are, but still do not feel bereft in this regard.

I think this summarises the trip.

Enjoyable and very educational, but I can’t shake off an unsettled feeling. After much thought I put this down to not being able to ‘read’ the people, and the feeling that my teacher will penalise me ( all over again) for not doing my homework well. I arrived not knowing who the people are, and sadly I leave not really knowing who they are…

Goodbye and thank you Albania !