May 2024. Tirana to Berat.
Mrs RM sees herself as an aspiring travel “influencer” (ugh) and was about to take thousands of photos of Albanian pastries and beer for her own Instagram page. At the very first hurdle we forgot to take a pic of the breakfast spread at the just opened Mercure on that first morning, so here’s one from Egon Steinmann;
The hot stew and soup like stuff in those red pots was the highlight, or perhaps it was that cake. Easily worth a tenner each, anyway.
Our favourite travel writer is Chelsea aka Cheap Holiday Expert, who’d just started an attempt to holiday in Tirana for under £100.
The idea of someone called Chelsea managing a budget is a bit laughable, but at least she has her priorities right;
It had cost us more than her entire budget to even park Long Stay at Luton Airport for 4 nights, and our hotel that first night was 5 times what Chelsea paid for her £13 bed in a hostel (who on earth stays in a Youth Hostel ?), but the Mercure was at least only five (5) minutes walk from our prosaically named South and North Albania Bus Terminal.
Wait ! What ? Google says 29 minutes to cross the road via the most circuitous imaginable, presumably because Google doesn’t like the idea of walking a long a hard shoulder of a dual carriageway. But I’m a licensed expert on hard shoulder walking, and you get a good view of Albanian street art on the way.
That art is a bit “obvious”, but at least there’s no graffiti yet.
Five minutes after check-out we were indeed standing at the bus station, which encouragingly has a big sign telling you when buses run.
Berat, platform No. 10, two an hour. Brilliant.
You try finding Platform 10 amongst the chaos.
There IS a system, says Gina, but you know what they say about folk called Gina.
Frankly, that was pretty much my only negative observation on Albania the whole trip. The buses ran on time, were comfortable enough, pretty cheap (£4.50 the 2 hour trip to mountainous Berat), and the locals honest and friendly.
The bus driver, seeing us bemused, came over and said “Berat“. I guess two tourists are probably heading to the tourist interior as we don’t look like beach bums. I also reckon the drivers leave when the bus is full, rather than at the stated time.
Here’s the exciting route (A-B);
and here’s the first thing you see leaving Tirana.
Looks like a presidential palace; it’s actually Hotel Amadeus (Amadeus).
We weren’t staying anywhere quite as grand as that in Berat; Guest House Leo closer to the bus station than the castle cost us £23. Honestly, it was cheaper to sleep than to eat at times.
Berat is a must-see, UNESCO heritage site (Albania’s Rye ?) based around a hill-top castle that I made Mrs RM walk up a cobbled lane to, despite the offer of a lift from the Leo’s owner.
She’d earned the first beer of the trip, just inside the castle walls at Temi.
If I’m honest, the moussaka (top) and aubergine dishes weren’t quite as great as the Google reviews, but that first cool, soft, Korça was. Like Tandleman said.
Unfussy but efficient service and a soundtrack of Knopfler and Sting, you could have been in a Whitley Bay micropub.
I reckon lunch was about £15, with a plate of fruit thrown in.
Are those greengages or what ?
retiredmartin 
And I thought it was me. Google Maps walking routes seem to have gone weird. Me and my mate were offered similar daft routes in Bradford a couple of weeks ago.
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Intriguing, which bit of Bradford ?
It’s odd that some walking routes aren’t recognised even when there’s clear paving.
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Between the train station and the International. There were a lot of roadworks but seemed to dislike direct routes.
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