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22th April and 2nd May 2003.

This was my 13th travel to Albania, but I am not superstitious. It is true, that my 4WD car was in service, but it was rather a luck. So we - two Hungarian botanist and my Polish girlfriend, Agnieszka - travelled by my small Suzuki.

About my trip to Albania

Tib
2004-03-13 15:39:55

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We start from Budapest on Eastern Monday, and next morning we were at the Albanian border at Hani i Hoti. We hadn't visa, so we had some problem with the entry. We were waiting 5 hours. We began the trip in Shkodra, where we changed money, and left to Tirana. From Lezha is built a new road, so the trip was only 2 hours long. In 2001 it needed 5 hours. In Tirana I met my friend, who helped us to get the visa and to find hotel and we went to Divjaka, where we spent 5 nights. In the National Park of Karavasta is an old workers holiday house, which is a hotel now. The rooms are partly updated - the bathroom, some furniture - but you can feel there the atmosphere of the socialist holidays. ( Of course if you are form an ex-communist country:-)

The National Park is famous of its virgin pine forest on the coast and the huge lagoons, where the pelicans live. The botanist found there a lot of rare plants and flowers. The lagoons and the forest is closed, only a part of the sandy beach is open for the tourists. The water is flat and warm from May till October. We have made two trips from Divjaka, first to Durres, which is the second largest city in Albania. There is the biggest port of the country. We visited the ancient amphiteatr, the old house of King Zogu and took a walk in the centre. We tried some Albanian cakes - bakllava, kadaif etc. Our second trip went to Elbasan, which was a famous industrial town in the communist era. It has a huge smelter, what was privatised, but only partly works, and a cement factory. The pollution is much lower than before, and the city preserved some of its communist wealth: the streets are clean and tidy, the blockhouses are well maintained. In the centre is an old wall with bastions, which encloses an old quarter. There are some old houses, churches and mosques. We stopped in Peqin too, what is a small town, with a beautiful composition of a mosque, a clocktower and high trees. Near Fier we visited the Ardenica orthodox monastery. ...