Experience Albania: Travel, Pictures, History, Culture

  Lauren and Marla took these from the plane, on their way to visit me for a week here in Albania.
 More to come from our week together in Shqiperia!

I wouldn’t have known it existed, as it’s a 30 minute drive off a main road I frequently travel. But Allkaj is where three of my former students are from. I went to visit them, meet their families and see their homes. I drank a lot of Coco Cola and ate a lot of [...]

Tomatoes, pears and apples.

I love these strings of hot red peppers. Zaku loves them. They make for great decor in your kitchen - or the side of the street - too.

Once again, ‘Cantina Cobo’ (The Cobo Vineyard) put on an excellent festival in celebration of harvesting the season’s grapes. There were more people, more attention paid to details and more organization compared to the festival in April, showing the vineyard’s improvements and progress as a business.
Traditional Albanian costumes and dancers:

Staff and Cobo family members in [...]

James came prepared to take a dip in the chilly pool of Bugove, a small town known for being the water source of the Berat - and beyond - region. Fed by a waterfall (see photo above), this little gem of a waterhole is a good 45 minunte hike from the main road. It’s clean, [...]

I stopped in at my host family’s house to find Julia with several kilos of plums, slicing and dicing.
I joined in and learned a new trade.

After halving them we set them on the window sill and they did their thing.

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I could sit and talk with Zaku for hours. There is something about his disposition and his advice that is so comforting.
I can’t remember what he was saying at the time I took these photos, but what’s important is that Zaku is doing great Zaku things at all times.

Kukes is a rather ‘new’ city, as the original is now underwater. Another manmade lake took over the old Kukes city and so now the new one reigns. We stopped by to see this northern point and to visit the three volunteers who live and work there.

A new bridge that helps connect Kukes to the [...]

The ferry … we’d all heard about it, and after some hesitation, we went for it. Two hours on the large ferry, which can carry cars, busses and lots of people. It was a beautiful day - rather hot - and by the end of the two hour ride we were excited to continue on [...]