It’s Saturday! Let’s get out and explore Tirana.
Started off our day getting coffee at our local Sophie Caffe. It’s a chain with a few locations around town and they make freddo espresso, so H has really been able to find a bunch of places that make her Greek coffee favorite. This one is close enough that we could walk to it in the morning before work and get coffee and a snack or something (even though we really haven’t). It’s a nice enough place to sit and I’ve been taking my notebook with me when we go out so I can write things down when we get brainstorming — video stuff, or things for New York, or whatever.
Our primary destination was the New Bazaar — Pazari i Ri — since every time we’ve been there so far, it’s been in the evening so all the vendors have been closed up. It was one of the places I still wanted to take some video at, so we made a concerted effort to get there during the day.
Found myself a place to get a haircut while we were exploring en route to the market, this one with a big KINGSMAN logo stolen straight from the movies.
In the spirit of Manners Maketh Man, a Haircut Maketh Dave, and I was in need, so even though this place was chichi at a whopping FIVE DOLLARS, I got the full service. It’s a little shorter than the first one, but it’s still pretty good.
We grabbed lunch nearby and then made it into the market. We wandered the stalls and took video of … well, a lot of things. Things like old telephones, loose tobacco, spices (including çaj mali, Albanian mountain tea), tchotchkes, mid-century passports, nuts and dried fruits, woven blankets, homemade raki in plastic water bottles, and some very disturbing WWII era headgear. We made a couple loops because it’s a lot to take in. It seems more like a tourist destination than an actual market for locals? But the buildings around the main bazaar hold meat shops and fishmongers and cheese guys, so maybe it’s more local-friendly than it seems on the surface.
One of the cafes around the market sells Puka Beer, one of the few craft beer brands made in Tirana, so we grabbed a beer and a spritz and sat a bit. It was nice to get a beer style that was slightly different than the usual “light lager” that is prevalent in the mass-market beer aisle in this part of the world.
We wandered back around to Skanderbeg and decided we were getting hungry, so we pointed ourselves towards Kungfu Noodle again. H had been dreaming about the chicken katsu, and it wasn’t a far walk. The girl at the counter recognized me (“You’re back!”) and asked if I was going to try something new. I liked the ramen I had last time but not so much that I wasn’t going to keep eating through the menu, so I opted for yakisoba this time. A much better choice, might be my new permanent order.
We eventually wandered back through Skanderbeg and took some nighttime photos and video with the ferris wheel and the carousel lit up. A good day exploring!