Welcome to the land of Zog - Sept 2019

To avoid any confusion I am not travelling currently and dates of the respective visits are now posted on all future Blogs.

Back about 12 months ago when the world was a very different place , my good lady wife and sat down and started to map out our respective travel plans for 2019, they took a pretty similar path to previous years, we'd have a few short breaks both together , we'd go away to our favourite Greek Island with some family, she'd do some healthy stuff , I'd do some places which really neither her or any of my friends would want to go but more importantly we'd plan our main break together. We'd done well in the past with a five weeks India/Nepal tour so this years smaller scale one without hopefully Earthquakes, Political unrest and Tropical Storms should be a piece of cake.

I had a 'reasonably' free run on what we could do so based on my contract status employment worked out we could go for 11 days without incurring too much time off work , question was where and when. For that amount of time it had to be Europe and as for when - September when the school kids are back, it's still warm and everything is just about still open. I mentioned Croatia which went down very well, I had never been but my wife had and loved it , so that was agreed then. All easy - job done...

However in the space a few days I had suggested a few extra place which were not dismissed so with that I booked us on a flight to Tirana in Albania. It's only 2.5 flight and the airport pretty close to the city where would be staying for 1 or 2 nights. Traffic non existent at 20:00 and night and we settled into our basic but clean hotel. I've stayed in numerous hotels with varying levels of door security but our front door did raise some concerns - why!

The view out of the window was not the best either and a late night wander was limited to very local.

But come daylight everything usually looks better and we'd sorted out a bit of a plan after talking to some local people - a city cable car then a whizz around the capital. We'd taken a cab to the cable car , it had only just open for the day and was empty , Eastern Europe loves a cable car and Albania was no different except it was a lot safer than some others I had been on, cracking clear day and wonderful views over Tirania - over 50% of the population of the country live here.

At the top there was a James Bond like building but alas no villain just a hotel but looked the part

We'd had a pleasant stroll around but time to crack on and next up was a place called the Piramida AKA The Pyramid of Tirana, this was a former museum and when built, the Pyramid was said to be the most expensive individual structure ever constructed in Albania but it was in a bit of a state bearing in mind it was only 30 years old and not 30,000 . There had been called to demolish it , it had been used for many things most recently the Pyramid was also used as a filming location for part of a remake of the 1995 cult horror film Castle Freak.

We'd been in town for less than 24 hrs but thought it was time to head north as we'd a fair amount to explore (not that I'd said too much about that to my partner in crime). Transport is cheap and whilst I am a massive fan of using local stuff , the last bus to Shokder in the north had left for the day and as for the trains well I was getting some odd looks there so without further ado and armed with a fistful of dollars we'd got a cab for about 30$ for the 2hr journey north. The roads were good , driver a good guy who was very proud of his country and scenery lovely.

The town was beautiful , clean, safe and loads of friendly people , would highly recommend it and a short walk around the town found a cracking clean hotel for $35 a night including what was to be a breakfast those most builders would struggle with. Dinner was delicious and set us back $20 including wine and beer both good. There was an added bonus of a car rally stopping over in the square with some classic cars in the middle of a rally.

Woke up to a lovely bright warm morning as my choice to move north proving to be the right one as Tirana had been hit with a 5.6 Earthquake 2 hrs after we left. I was still puzzled by the trains or lack of them and having a spare hr I thought it was time for a wander, eventually I found out there was a station and there were trains ,all good , however on closer inspection there wasn't a lot of movement from either areas.

It was time now to break for the border and Montenegro was our next stop.

As for King Zog - Zogu was officially elected as the first President of Albania by the Constituent Assembly on 21 January 1925, statues throughout Albania are evident.