Our first night in Albania was parked at the side of a small road.
The highlight of the day was a trip down a side road to appreciate rural Albania away from the main road. After two miles the road deteriorated until it was more pothole than road but we ploughed on in the mistaken belief that as soon as we got to a town it would improve. The town turned out to be a handful of houses and the map and satnav had got it wrong because the road culminated in a dead-end. So we had to endure the tortuous journey back to the main road. But the scenery was idyllic and the people friendly. Among the mosques there are plenty of newly-built churches.
There is no chance anyone will ever run out of fuel in Albania. There are garages literally every 100 metres, many of them operated by a company called “Kastrati”. I didn’t stop. The language seems to be unlike any other with the strangest place-names. In quick succession, we passed the villages of suka-boil and puke.
They don’t appear to believe in road signs. Eventually we came to a large nondescript town which got larger and larger until we realised that it was Tirana, the capital of Albania. With absolutely nothing to keep us and still no wifi, we decided to strike westwards to Durres on the three-lane motorway to the airport and came to a very smart service station which had free wifi and we each had a very pleasant pork steak and chips, coke and expresso coffee which cost a total 11 euros.
Durres was a nice town with a three-mile long promenade fringed by ageing palm trees. Tripadvisor says that all the things we like (historical stuff like fortresses and amphitheatres etc) are in the south so we pressed on towards Gjirokaster. Fier was a nightmare; the satnav sent me up a one-way street so we turned off down narrow side roads just wide enough to get through with the wing mirrors pulled in and full of kiddies playing. Albania has more policemen than people, standing at every street corner with little sticks with “stop” written on them. They usually give us a cheery smile and wave us on with exaggerated waving of arms. At Fier, a little old man weaving all over the road on his bicycle drove right in front of me and the inevitable policeman screamed at him and then roared with laughter. Eventually we came to the very pleasant town of Vlore and decided to stop for the night at the eastern end of the town.