Shkodra, Albania

Whew. "The 2 hour" bus ride to Shkodra from Tirana was more like 4. But it cost only about $5, so I can't complain too much. We opted to not rent a car here. It's way too crazy for me to take that risk. Greek drivers are hyper aggressive, but Albanians are on a whole other level. Albanian drivers make Greek drivers look like yellow- bellied, lilly- livered cowards. We decided to save our health, sanity, and dollars in exchange for lost time and sweating. For some reason, Albanians like to drive backwards. A lot. Like, whole city blocks of driving backwards.

Shkodra is the jumping off point for tourist activities in the north. We all want to go to the "Accursed Mountains" or "Albanian Alps" (your choice.) But we've decided that since it's going to rain heavily on the days we're available to hike, we're just going to cancel going there. It's a tough decision, but it's one you have to make as a traveler. I've been planning for months to do the famous Valbone to Theth hike across a mountain pass. But it will be dangerous and cold with thunderstorms in these mountains. It IS the Accursed Mountains after all. Well, it will always be there, but will there be too many people doing it? There are a LOT of tourists in this town, mostly younger backpackers who are going to do that hike. The word is out.

The other main reason for coming to this area is a famous ferry ride from Komani to Fierze on the Drin river, which has been dammed to form Komani Lake. My guidebook author compared it to Norwegian fjords + the Chilean Patagonia coast. While it was amazing and beautiful, I'd rate it third place of the 3.

We booked a tour that picked us up at our hotel and drove about 20 of us to the ferry port an hour and a half away. There are about 6 or 8 ferries a day now and there used to be just a couple a few years ago. Words can't describe the beauty, so check out this one minute video. We walked through the dam that formed this magical lake to start our tour.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ryokym5sbb1myuDQ7

We met some fun travelers on the boats and since we weren't hiking, we took the ferry back right away. For dinner, we went to the same seafood restaurant again because it was so good. Tonight might have been the best meal of the trip. For under $50, we had 2 glasses of wine each, fish soup, a massive crudo (ceviche) platter with 6 types of seafood, and the local specialty, a carp casserole. They farm carp in Komani Lake which is the lake formed by the dam where we took our ferry ride. Deanne grew up in Iowa and carp was big there. The sauce was full of grandmotherly love.

Afterwards, we did the Albanian stroll, the xhiro ( SHErow?). Like Spain's paseo, the Albanians like to see and be seen on an evening stroll. It's lovely.

On our last morning, we took a taxi to the edge of town to the Venice Mask Factory, where they make paper mache masks in the Venetian style for Carnival. The Venetians don't make them anymore. That was pretty cool and we bought a small one as a souvenir. A 1-minute video of it is here.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ztodQE4xNuJy5gYP9

Addendum: I didn't want to write anything too negative about this town, but two days later Deanne and I both agreed that we really don't like this place! Deanne called it "scrotum" if that's any indication.

It's really just a jumping off point for other places so I wouldn't spend too much time here. They have no city buses that we can find . And taxis are incredibly difficult to find. I've traveled all over the world and I've never seen that in any city in any country! There's no bus station so there's buses that just randomly park everywhere so you have to hunt for the bus that goes to your city. They're getting so many tourists here, It's like they just don't care.

More photos and videos are here.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/rD3wb5zx9HX2j7wVARead more