https://guidetoalbania.com/Recent content on Guide to AlbaniaHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usFri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/albanian-raki-guide-how-its-made/Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/albanian-raki-guide-how-its-made/The first raki I ever drank, I did not drink on purpose. I was seven years old in my grandfather’s courtyard in a village outside Berat, and I thought the little glass on the low table held water. It was October, the grape harvest was just behind us, and the whole village smelled like slowly burning wood and crushed fruit. I took a sip, my eyes watered, and my grandfather laughed so hard he had to sit down.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/koman-lake-ferry-albania/Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/koman-lake-ferry-albania/The engine cut out somewhere in the middle of the canyon, and for about thirty seconds the only sound was water lapping against the hull. Everyone on the upper deck went quiet. The cliffs rose straight up on both sides, grey limestone streaked with green where shrubs had found a crack to grip. The water below was so still it doubled everything, sky and stone and the thin white line of a waterfall dropping from somewhere above.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/butrint-3000-years-of-history/Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/butrint-3000-years-of-history/The sound that stays with me from Butrint is not what you would expect. Not a guide’s voice or the click of cameras. It is the silence. I walked through the Lion Gate on an October morning with fog still hanging over the Vivari Channel, and the only sound was water dripping from oak branches onto two-thousand-year-old stone. For a moment I forgot what century I was in. Butrint (Butrinti in Albanian) sits on a small peninsula at the southern tip of Albania, surrounded by a lake, a channel, and dense forest.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/albanian-gliko-fruit-preserves-in-syrup/Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/albanian-gliko-fruit-preserves-in-syrup/The first time I tasted gliko arrë, walnut preserve, I was eleven years old, sitting in my great-aunt Donika’s kitchen in Përmet. She placed a small glass plate in front of me with a single spoon resting across it. On the spoon sat a whole green walnut, dark as mahogany, glistening in thick syrup. Next to it, a glass of cold water so clear it caught the afternoon light. “Haje ngadalë,” she said.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/albania-750000-bunkers/Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/albania-750000-bunkers/The first bunker I ever noticed was on a beach near Durrës. I was maybe six years old, building a sandcastle with my cousin, and there it was: a concrete dome the size of a small car, half-buried in the sand, its gun slit staring out at the Adriatic like a single unblinking eye. I asked my father what it was. He said it was a bunker. I asked what it was for.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/understanding-besa-albanian-code-of-honor/Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/understanding-besa-albanian-code-of-honor/A few years ago, I was driving through the mountains near Theth with a friend from London. We had a flat tire on a gravel road with no cell signal and no spare that fit. Within ten minutes, a man appeared from a stone farmhouse we had not even noticed. He did not ask what happened. He walked to the car, looked at the tire, and waved for us to follow him inside.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/xhiro-the-albanian-evening-walk/Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/xhiro-the-albanian-evening-walk/I did not understand xhiro until I stopped trying to understand it. My first summer back in Albania after years in Italy, I was staying with family in Korçë. Around seven in the evening, my aunt stood up from the couch, smoothed her hair, and said, “Hajde, do dalim për xhiro.” Let’s go out for xhiro. I asked where we were going. She looked at me like I had asked something very strange.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/tave-kosi-albanias-national-dish/Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/tave-kosi-albanias-national-dish/The first time I truly understood tavë kosi, I was not in a restaurant. I was standing in my gjyshe’s kitchen in Elbasan, watching her pull a clay dish from the oven. The yogurt top had puffed up like a golden cloud, trembling slightly as she set it on the counter. “Prit, prit,” she said. Wait. We watched it slowly sink in the center, releasing a wave of garlic and oregano that filled the room.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/how-to-use-furgons-in-albania/Mon, 06 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/how-to-use-furgons-in-albania/The first time I took a furgon, I stood at the wrong corner in Tirana for forty minutes, asked three people where the “bus station” was, and got three different answers. That was ten years ago. I have since taken hundreds of furgons across all twelve counties of Albania, and I can tell you this: once you understand the system, it is the cheapest, most authentic, and sometimes the only way to get around this country.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/welcome-to-guide-to-albania/Mon, 06 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/welcome-to-guide-to-albania/I have been writing about Albania for years, mostly in notebooks and messages to friends who kept asking me the same question: “Where should I go?” It always started with that. Where should I go, what should I eat, is it safe, is it cheap, is it worth it. And every time, I found myself writing longer and longer replies, because Albania is not a place you can sum up in a few lines.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/unesco-protected-sites-in-albania/Sat, 15 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/unesco-protected-sites-in-albania/Albania is a small country with a long memory. Within its borders sit four UNESCO World Heritage Sites that together span more than three thousand years of human history, from the stone foundations of an ancient Greek colony to the untouched beech forests that predate civilization itself. I have visited each of them more than once, in different seasons and different moods, and every return teaches me something new. Here is what you need to know before you go.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/the-enchanting-beach-of-ksamil-a-hidden-gem-in-albania/Sat, 15 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/the-enchanting-beach-of-ksamil-a-hidden-gem-in-albania/The first time I saw Ksamil, I was nineteen and crammed into the back of a furgon (minibus) with a bag of byrek on my lap and sand already between my toes from a stop in Saranda. The bus lurched around one last bend on the coastal road, and there it was: water so blue it looked artificial, like someone had poured paint into the Ionian Sea. I remember turning to the woman next to me, a stranger, and we just looked at each other and laughed.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/famous-hiking-trails-in-albania/Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/famous-hiking-trails-in-albania/I love our beaches. I really do. But every summer I watch tourists fly into Tirana, transfer straight to Ksamil, and leave without ever seeing the Albania that made me fall in love with this country in the first place. The mountains. Albania is one of the most vertically dramatic countries in Europe. Within a few hours of the coast, you can be standing on a ridge at 1,800 meters, listening to nothing but wind and the occasional distant cowbell.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/short-history-on-albanias-communism-era/Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/short-history-on-albanias-communism-era/My grandmother still flinches at loud knocks on the door. She is eighty-three years old, living in a sunny apartment in Tirana with geraniums on the balcony and a Turkish coffee habit that would alarm any cardiologist. But a sharp knock and her face changes. Just for a second. Then she laughs it off. That reflex is communism. Not the ideology in a textbook, not a political debate, but a lived thing that shaped how an entire generation moves through the world.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/albanian-cuisine/Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/albanian-cuisine/Albanian food does not shout. It does not try to impress you with technique or presentation or a foam of something on top of something else. It arrives at the table in clay dishes and cast iron pans, smelling like slow time and good ingredients, and it asks only that you sit down and eat properly. I grew up in a household where cooking was the central act of the day.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/nightlife-in-albania-something-for-everyone/Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/nightlife-in-albania-something-for-everyone/I’ll tell you something about Albanian nightlife that surprises most visitors: it doesn’t really start until you think it should be ending. If you show up at a bar at 9pm, you’ll find it half-empty, the bartender polishing glasses with no urgency whatsoever. By midnight, the same place will be so packed you can barely reach the bar. That’s just how we do things here. Going out in Albania is less about the drinking and more about the being together.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/albanian-highest-mountains/Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/albanian-highest-mountains/Most people picture Albania as a Mediterranean beach destination, and yes, the coastline is gorgeous. But step inland and you will find a country defined by its mountains. Over 70 percent of Albania is mountainous terrain. Peaks above 2,000 meters line the borders, cut through the interior, and shape the culture of nearly every region. I have spent years working my way through these ranges, from easy summit trails that families can manage to serious alpine scrambles that left me questioning my life choices at 2,500 meters.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/best-time-to-visit-albania-2/Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/best-time-to-visit-albania-2/People always ask me the same question: “Elena, when should I visit Albania?” And I always answer with another question: “What do you want to do?” Because this small country somehow manages to offer a completely different experience depending on the month you arrive. Albania stretches from snow-capped alpine peaks in the north to a Mediterranean coastline that stays warm well into October. The mountains and the sea live in different climates, different rhythms, different moods.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/how-to-explore-albanian-coastline-transport-means-to-get-around-transport-in-albania/Sat, 18 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/how-to-explore-albanian-coastline-transport-means-to-get-around-transport-in-albania/The first time I drove the Albanian Riviera, I white-knuckled my way over the Llogara Pass with my windows down, the smell of pine forests mixing with salt air a thousand meters below. By the time I reached Dhermi, my hands ached and my heart was full. That drive changed how I think about coastal travel in Albania: how you get around here is not just logistics. It is part of the experience.https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/must-visit-southern-albanian-beaches-top-riviera-locations/Sat, 18 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://guidetoalbania.com/blog/must-visit-southern-albanian-beaches-top-riviera-locations/I have driven the SH8 coastal road from Llogara Pass down to Ksamil more times than I can count, and every single time, the moment the Ionian Sea appears below the mountains, I pull over and just look. The water is so absurdly blue that first-time visitors think the photos are edited. They are not. That is just what the Albanian Riviera looks like. But not every beach along this coast is the same.