Cab time.
It’s funny how lazy we’ve become. I don’t know, maybe “lazy” isn’t the right word for it. But shoot, we’ve been here a month? Now? And have been quite the homers on the weekends since getting here. We’ve walked out for coffees here and there, we have made a loop or two through Skanderbeg, but the flip side of it is definitely “we’re spending time on the couch watching Andor” and honestly I’m not sad.
But we’ve definitely hit the “ready for some food variety” checkpoint.
I think I wrote last year about how Albanian drivers are complete maniacs with disregard for any kind of pleasantries or cares for the continued wellbeing of their vehicles. If there’s two inches between you and the next car, you are not trying hard enough. It’s even funnier with cabbies, who somehow manage to both dive completely into this stereotype, and still complain about everyone else’s driving.
Our cab dropped us off at Kung Fu Noodle, a little fast-food Asian restaurant down by the stadium, near Blloku. We found it last year and it’s pretty enjoyable, but I will say now that it’s no StreetWok. We grabbed lunch and tried to spin for stadium keychain Pikmin (the soccer stadium here can give them).
Our next stop after that was to Antigua, I think the only coffee roaster in town at this point — another favorite from last year. They have made some additions to the menu this summer which I will definitely take advantage of — new cold brew which was delicious, as well as an espresso tonic which had a nice fruitiness to it. Nice short chocolate-chip cookies as well. Unfortunately they were closing a little early, so we only squeezed in two coffees each, ha.
With the coffee shop closing up a little earlier than expected, we decided to continue our refreshments with a stop at the tiki bar that sits catty-corner to the coffee shop. It’s quite the themed experience, complete with thatched roof over the patio and a big island-themed mural on one wall. They had the “Grandpa” beer (Gjyshit) that we found last year and is made here in Albania so I got an IPA; H got an Aperol spritz (and remarked that it seemed weird that I hadn’t had an Aperol spritz in Albania yet — I think it still isn’t warm enough?) Cute little place — I would go back and hang out on that porch again.
Slowly but surely we were thinking about food again, so we finished up in the tiki bar and made our way out to Rruga Sami Frësheri, which is one of the main borders of Blloku. We figured we’d check out some of the international grocery stores on the street before getting some food. First stop was Neranxhi which has a few spots around town and mostly has Asian ingredients and spices, but also carries some Mexican / South American items — unfortunately just as we walked in the door, the power in the entire block went out! So we made our way up to Baronesha who did have power, avoided the eight-dollar boxes of cereal this time, and bought some very silly snack items — canned pickled jalapenos and nacho cheese dip.
There used to be a French fry place called A’dams in this area but evidently they closed up (or we couldn’t find them), so we settled on grabbing lunch from Opa, another of our favorites from last year, a Greek street food place that makes nice chicken kebabs. Next stop after that was up to the river (air quotes) and a nice walk down to the Pyramid, where we stopped in a game store so H could check out the Instax printers. There was a sale going on and so she decided to get the wide Instax printer she had been eyeballing, and we got an even better discount for being Albanian residents. Nice.
It started raining a little — it had rained off and on all day — so we grabbed a coffee in the Mon Cheri in one of the other Pyramid blocks and tried to wait it out. Ultimately we decided to grab a cab back to the apartment — there was something noisy happening up in Skanderbeg so we were likely not going to be able to walk through it anyways. A good day!