Albania and Macedonia private tour

Albania and Macedonia are wonderful places to visit. They have marvelous ancient towns, huge fortresses, lovely churches and mosques, Roman ruins, beautiful mountains, lakes and ocean beaches. It all is very affordable, a fraction of the cost of a trip to Western Europe, and you see so few other tourists that you have a feeling of discovery.

My wife, Jeanne, and I arranged for a private tour, June 8-21, 2016, with the help of Albania Travelnet (Sami Frasheri, Str. 14, Metropol Trading Center, Tirana, Albania; phone +355 42247518, albania-travelnet.com). For the two of us, the cost was €3,980 (near $4,457), not including airfare.

Breakfasts were included, but we paid separately for all other meals. Except for tips to our guides, everything else was included. Our guide and driver was Enea Kumi. In addition, we had local guides at the two major Macedonian sites of Ohrid and Skopje. Not counting the first and last travel days or the days we crossed borders, we ended up having eight full days of sightseeing in Albania and four in Macedonia.

Arriving in Tirana, the capital of Albania, we walked around near our hotel, which faced the main city square, changed money, had some dinner and then went to bed.

In the morning, we met Enea and took a walking tour of the city center. We found Tirana to be a very pleasant, safe, walkable city. (In fact, throughout Albania and Macedonia, drivers were extremely courteous to pedestrians.) The oldest part of the city dates back to the sixth century AD, but modern Tirana was unremarkable. 

As was the custom in the area, we had lunch as our main meal, and we almost always ate with Enea. He would suggest local specialties, and we’d usually eat family-style, paying for our share of each check. Meals cost $5-$10 per person.

We had lamb, fish, sausage, steamed mussels, various soufflés and stews. We frequently had French fries, and we always had fresh bread and a salad that was similar to a Greek salad. Once, we stopped at a village bakery and had fresh cheese pies for less than a dollar each.

On the second day, in Shkodra, we discovered an activity that was common in most Albanian towns. A main street had been converted into a pedestrian mall, and in the evening, families and old women walked around, and men congregated in “men only” sidewalk cafés drinking tiny cups of super-strong coffee.

Finding a café there with women customers, we sat and people-watched and enjoyed a local beer. If there were any other tourists in town, they weren’t obvious to us. Every hotel on our tour was within walking distance of the most interesting part of town, so this was the way we spent most evenings.

Our hotel in Shkodra had been converted from a very old house. Our room was beautiful, but the air-conditioner didn’t blow cold air. This turned out to be a common problem, one we solved by opening a window. Bugs were few, and every place that we stayed cooled off nicely at night.

We spent several days along the beautiful coast, visiting towns that had been Greek colonies before the birth of Christ. We drove into the mountains to an elevation of 3,500 feet and through a forested national park and a chain of very small, old villages.

We continued on to a huge, looming seaside fortress constructed about 200 years ago by Ali Pasha, a scoundrel who, it is said, started as a common thief and worked his way up to be the de facto ruler of Albania. The three of us were the only people touring the fortress.

The highlights of our trip were three UNESCO World Heritage Site towns — Gjirokastra and Berat in Albania and Ohrid in Macedonia — each extremely old but still functioning. People live in 400-year-old houses and worship in 800-year-old churches. Fortresses still top the hills, and most of the city wall of Berat is intact. We felt as if we’d gone back in time.

In Gjirokastra, we stayed in a converted house from the Ottoman Empire. The room was a wonderful mixture of new and old. 

We toured the town’s fortress, now a museum, as well as a house that was the birthplace of the dictator Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania during the Communist era until his death in 1985.

Crossing into Macedonia, we drove to Ohrid, the country’s premier vacation spot, situated on the shore of huge Lake Ohrid. There was a wide, half-mile-long pedestrian mall, lined with shops for vacationers, that terminated in an area of shops (grocery, hardware, etc.) for locals. 

We visited a Roman amphitheater, a church originally built in AD 960 and a huge fortress above the town.      

In Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, the government has refaced many Communist-era buildings and has begun building monumental buildings, a triumphal arch and statues and fountains. We were told they’ve erected 250 bronze statues, with more planned.

The main city square had a 100-foot-high statue of Alexander the Great on his horse, surrounded by a circular fountain, plus a large area of pavement with nozzles spouting water in time to music. Children enjoyed running between the nozzles. 

We drove south through Mavrovo National Park and stopped at the beautiful St. John the Baptist’s Monastery, later crossing into Albania and returning to Tirana. Enea took us to the airport the next morning.

We couldn’t have been more pleased with this tour. The travel arrangements went off without a hitch, and Enea was a safe driver, an excellent guide and a pleasant travel companion.

DAVID SMITH

Irvine, CA