The Albania Itinerary: 7, 10, and 14 Days, With Honest Driving Times

The most common mistake in Albanian trip planning is not choosing the wrong places. It is choosing the right places and giving them the wrong amount of time.

Albania is small. Three hundred and forty kilometres from the Montenegrin border to the Greek one. On a map it looks like a country you could see in five days. In practice, the road from Gjirokastër to Sarandë climbs a mountain, the road along the Riviera is one lane of hairpins behind a truck, and Google’s estimate of two hours means three with a coffee and a flock of sheep.

So the routes below are built around real driving times, with a rule I have never regretted: no more than one long transfer day per week, and never two nights in a row in different beds.

Real Driving Times

Add thirty percent to whatever your phone tells you between June and September. These are the numbers I actually plan around.

Two structural facts follow from that table, and they shape every itinerary below.

The south is a loop and the north is a dead end. Tirana, Berat, Gjirokastër, the coast and back to Tirana is a clean circle with no backtracking. The Alps are an out-and-back from Shkodër, and the ferry runs on its own schedule.

You cannot do both properly in a week. People try. They end up spending four of seven days in a car.

Seven Days: The South Loop

This is the right first trip to Albania, and I would not change it.

Day 1. Tirana. Land, get into the city, do nothing ambitious. Skanderbeg Square, a coffee, the evening xhiro, dinner in Pazari i Ri. If you have energy, Bunk’Art 2 is twenty minutes and shows you what the country you are standing in used to be.

Day 2. Tirana. Bunk’Art 1 and the Dajti cable car in the morning, Blloku in the afternoon. Tirana is not a two-day city for everyone, but it is a two-day city for anyone who wants to understand why the buildings are painted like that.

Day 3. Tirana to Berat. Collect the car after breakfast, not before. Two hours. Arrive for lunch, walk up to the castle in the late afternoon when the light hits the Mangalem windows, and stay in a Gorica guesthouse across the river.

Day 4. Berat to Gjirokastër. Three hours through the Vjosa valley, which is one of the last wild rivers in Europe and worth stopping for. Gjirokastër castle before it closes, then the bazaar in the evening.

Day 5. Gjirokastër to Sarandë, via Butrint. An hour down. Give Butrint three hours, properly, in the morning before the coaches. Sleep in Sarandë or, better, Ksamil out of season.

Day 6. The coast north. Sarandë to Himarë or Dhërmi, stopping at Porto Palermo. This is the day to swim, not to drive far.

Day 7. Back to Tirana. Through the Llogara tunnel or over the pass, then the motorway. Three to four hours with stops. Fly out the following morning, not the same evening.

The car question for this route

You can do the seven-day loop entirely on furgons for well under fifty euro. It works, it is how most Albanians travel, and you will see more of the country.

But this specific route is where a car earns its money, because the Riviera day is the one where public transport fails you and where the whole point is stopping wherever the water looks right. Pick the car up on day three in Tirana and drop it back at the end.

Albanian agencies are generally cheaper than the airport chains and more flexible about delivery; Localrent lists most of them with the deposit terms shown next to the daily rate, which matters more than the rate itself. Book weeks ahead for July and August, and read what to refuse at the rental desk before you sign anything.

Ten Days: The South Loop, Done Properly

Same shape, three more days, and every one of them spent standing still rather than driving.

• Add a second night in Berat, and use it for the Osum canyon or a winery in the hills.
• Add a night in Përmet, between Gjirokastër and the coast. Thermal baths at Bënjë, an Ottoman bridge, and the town where gliko is taken most seriously in the country. Almost nobody goes, which is the point.
• Add a second night on the Riviera, in Himarë rather than Sarandë, and take a boat to a cove you cannot drive to.

The temptation at ten days is to bolt on the Alps. Resist it. Shkodër and back plus the ferry is a minimum of three days done badly, and it will cost you the parts of the south that make the trip.

Fourteen Days: South Loop Plus the Alps

Two weeks is the first honest length for the whole country. Do the south first, in the shape above, then go north.

Days 1 to 9: the ten-day south loop, ending back in Tirana. Return the car here. You do not want it for what comes next.

Day 10. Tirana to Shkodër. Two hours. Rozafa castle at sunset, and the promenade in the evening. Shkodër is the gateway to everything northern and a good city in its own right.

Day 11. The Koman ferry. Early minibus from Shkodër to the ferry port, then two and a half hours up the lake through a flooded canyon that looks like Norway. Overnight in Valbona at a bujtina.

Day 12. Valbona to Theth. The classic pass hike, six to eight hours, and the best day’s walking in the country. Your bag goes over by road.

Day 13. Theth. The Blue Eye of Theth, the waterfall, the lock-in tower. Do not stack it with a travel day.

Day 14. Theth to Tirana. Four hours on a road that has improved enormously and is still a mountain road.

That last day is exactly the sort of transfer where a pre-booked ride is worth the money rather than a negotiated one at the guesthouse door, particularly with a flight the next morning; a fixed-price transfer from the mountains to Rinas removes the one variable you cannot control at the end of a trip.

What to Cut, and What People Wrongly Cut

Cut Durrës unless you want the Roman amphitheatre specifically, which is genuinely remarkable and sits in the middle of a fairly ordinary modern city. The beaches there are not why you came.

Cut Ksamil in August. It is beautiful and it has been comprehensively developed. The rest of the southern coast is better and emptier.

Do not cut Berat for Gjirokastër or the reverse. They are both Ottoman UNESCO towns and people assume they are interchangeable. They are not remotely alike. Berat is white plaster and windows in a river valley; Gjirokastër is grey stone and fortified towers on a mountainside.

Do not cut Tirana. Every itinerary you read online treats the capital as an airport with a square attached. It is the only place in the country where you can see what modern Albania is actually deciding to become, and that is worth two days.

Practical Things That Apply to All Three

Fly into Tirana. Vlora’s new airport finally has scheduled flights in 2026, but the timetable is one seasonal Zurich route from late June, nothing more. Kukës is useful only if you are starting in the north.

Sort your data before you fly. Albania is outside EU roaming and the bill is genuinely nasty. The options are here.

Get insurance that covers the actual trip. Driving mountain roads and walking a 1,795-metre pass are both things that standard policies quietly exclude. Albania’s real risk is the road, not crime, and a policy that names driving and hiking costs a few euro a day.

Go in June or September. Every argument points the same way: same sea, half the crowd, two thirds the price.

Book the Koman ferry and the Theth guesthouses ahead in summer. Both genuinely sell out, and neither has a fallback.

The One-Sentence Version

Seven days: Tirana, Berat, Gjirokastër, the coast, back.

Ten days: the same, but stop moving so much, and add Përmet.

Fourteen days: all of that, then Shkodër, the ferry, and walk from Valbona to Theth.

And whatever the length, leave a day at the end doing nothing in particular. Albania is better at unplanned afternoons than almost anywhere, and no itinerary can schedule the thing you will actually remember.