Category: Albania 2026

After planning last night to head out towards the airfield park, we woke up this morning and kinda remembered how lots of things are closed on Sundays still here, so maybe flat-out exploring a new area was better done on a non-Sunday. So maybe a short day out and then a relaxing evening in with some hobby time.

Coffee again at Hana (just an iced Americano for me, they were busy and I do want them to see me as a regular customer who is thoughtful and ruggedly handsome) and then I thought maybe we’d at least look a little westerly, but evidently it was game day at the stadium and it did feel quite raucous, so instead we went back towards the innards of town to see if we could find some lunch.

Lunch was at a place called Kok a Pule — we got a sandwich, some chicken tenders, two fries and two bottles of water for under $10. (Another in-your-face reminder of the drastically different cost of living to America.) Fries were good, crinkle cut fries. Sandwich was good too. But it’ll never make it to the apartment in that condition.

We kept walking a little after lunch, towards the Pyramid and Bulevardi Dëshmorët e Kombit (Martyrs of the Nation) which is the wide road that goes from Skanderbeg down to Mother Teresa Square. There appeared to be some kind of art installation down in the old traffic circle at Mother Teresa, so we went to check it out — turned out to be a temporary library! Very interesting architectural design, with green movie-theater-style seats and shelves of books on various topics — art, architecture, British literature, as well as a section of kids’ books.

We came back up towards the Pyramid, tried to check out Albagame for a Switch 2 case for H (no luck, closed), then stopped for coffee at the Mulliri by Park Rinia before making our way home. Shorter day, back in time to listen to the second half of the North London Derby which was nice, and then delivery Chinese food to cap it all off.

Next two weekends we’ll be in Athens, then back to the US for the two after that. And then maybe we’ll get out to that park.

We’re determined to explore more new areas of Tirana as we think further about a “permanent” residence here. Both of the areas we’ve lived so far have had their plusses and minuses, but there are tons of neighborhoods, so maybe we just haven’t seen the “perfect” spot yet.

But that requires coffee so we started our day at Hana. It’s become the de facto Antigua replacement in the past week or two, and while they aren’t their own coffee roaster, they are a very good coffee shop, with a very third-wave mindset, good beans from The Barn in Berlin, and excellent chocolate chip cookies if you get there early enough.

I tried an iced v60 last weekend and it was very good — they have little individual-ish bags of beans for v60s — this one said it had notes of blackberry jam which I definitely got and enjoyed. I had been chatting with one of the baristas and she recommended the same treatment for another bean, this one with chocolate and orange, so I picked that one for today. It was also good … although I think I like the blackberry one better.

After there, we headed south and around the opposite side of the stadium (there’s a tiny football pitch here where KF Tirana play — “Wrexham-sized” as H put it) and then kept walking straight, heading towards the big park and man-made lake at the southern end of the city. There was evidence that we are getting closer to spring — the cherry trees have started to flower. We found another spot to get a second coffee and H deemed the area the most relaxing she’d been in so far. It was maybe newer overall than our current building (which is probably Communist-era) and you could still see signs you were in Albania if you knew what you were looking for, but overall it was pleasant.

We stopped for … lunch? at a place called Tony’s American Something or Other and they had Mexican offerings and if we have not learned anything yet in our time in Albania, it was evidenced by us both ordering “enchiladas” despite being fooled time and again by anything that purports to pass as Mexican. The Greek salad was good though. I think we’re both looking forward to Greek salads in Athens next week.

Since that put us back on the street that Woodrow Wilson is on, we started wandering back towards the apartment, stopped at My Way to finish out the daylight with some Aperol spritzes, and then went into Opa to have some chicken skewers for a late dinner.

A very nice day. We agreed that it was easy and necessary to keep exploring, so planned to wander out west on Sunday. There’s an old airfield runway there that’s been turned into a park, and we’ve been seeing apartment listings in that area, so we’re curious to find out what it’s like.

This is the first February we’ve spent in Albania and so far, it’s been less “winter” and more “rainy season.” Temps are mild but there always seems to be a chance for the cloud cover to open up and rain at any point. There’s been some thunder and lightning here and there the last two weeks, but mostly it’s just been stormy clouds and ten-minute downpours. All you have to do is hide under an umbrella at any of the many coffee shops you pass and it’s all good.

It does, however, make it a little more likely that we wake up, look at the weather forecast, and decide to make “getting coffee” the problem of the delivery kid on the Wolt motor scooter.

But it’s killing our travel planning, which seems to only happen at Mulliri. We talked this past weekend about using the upcoming three-day weekend to rent a car and go out exploring, maybe to Berat, but here it is Wednesday and because we haven’t been to a coffee shop since Sunday, it seems to have hit a speed bump.

Gotta get out tomorrow, if only so we can sort out the weekend.

When we were out this weekend, we got approached by a younger guy on a bike who had heard us speaking English. He was, essentially, “creating content” — running a bike tour company and trying to create more English-speaking content for his business Instagram channel to appeal to tourists. We had a little friendly chat — he was curious about our experience, what we liked, where we liked, where else we had been around Albania. Nice guy, and we wished him well in his business ventures.

Anyways, parts of our conversation appeared on his Instagram channel today. I’ve always thought it was weird to hear myself (since way back when I was eight and was recording myself cracking jokes) but it is, I think, more weird to see yourself where you don’t expect yourself.

(I mean, in this digital age where everyone has a video camera in their pocket, I’m sure I’ve been in hundreds of people’s home movies by now, I just never get to see them so I’m oblivious to it. I wish I got tagged in all this stuff, I bet I said some funny thing in someone’s video that I’ve long forgotten.)

Another lazy day today. The rain’s off and on and I did run to the grocery store and stocked up on soda and some groceries, so we’ll make it to tomorrow.

But it might mean Wolting some coffee.

Sunday of our first “out in the world” weekend back in Tirana went a bit like Saturday — get up, go to Mulliri, get hungry, etc. The conversation at Mulliri was even mostly the same, although with decidedly different results — after digging around, exploring options, picking layover or stopover, we actually bought the airline tickets to Australia for this summer. Crazy! To think only thirty years ago we would have had to go to a travel agent. Now we can just click a button on our phones.

I am pretty excited about this. I know H is not excited about the long time on a plane. On multiple planes, really, since the flight is TIA > LHR > SIN > SYD and almost 30 hours in air time. We really are on the exact opposite side of the world.

Next item on the list was to see if we could find Instax film. We had seen it in quite a few places last year, most notably in a game shop chain called Albagame, but so far they were very low on stock or completely out in most locations. H thought she remembered a place from last year down on Rruga Sami Frësheri that had cameras in the window, and that way led towards old favorite drinking spots from the last two years, so we went to see what we could find. Shpresa was the name of the shop — a nice, big electronics store with a full Apple product display, a bunch of drones and other video equipment, game consoles, and conveniently a giant countertop full of the Instax film H was looking for. I love my Albagame but I gotta remember this place is here, if only for all the DJI video goodies.

We also went into Baronesha which is a funny little import “specialty” grocery store. It carries some funny American imports like boxes of pancake mix but also things from other expat diasporas like cans of British baked beans. We mainly go in to get jalapenos — they had a good Mexican brand this time — and H also got a bottle of Tajin since we left our bag of spices at home accidentally this trip.

Grabbed lunch at Pastaria. It’s never going to be lost on me that we can eat out cheaper than we can cook, and this place is really one of the proving spots. Two bowls of pasta for around six bucks — spaghetti at home costs more than that. (Don’t worry, we upped the final bill by drinking an entire bottle of wine.) Then we took a nice circuit through the ol’ Blokku neighborhood before settling in for another round of drinks at My Way and then dinner at Opa, a local Greek fast food chain.

The location of the new apartment is definitely nice for days like this where we want to just wander. It wasn’t bad up north but we definitely finished some nights dead on our feet and getting a cab back to the apartment; here when we wrap up, it’s just across the bridge and a block down and straight into the building. So it does have that going for it.