Why you should make Albania your next place to visit

By Hannah Castenskiold, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands

Being on a year abroad is one of the easiest ways to catch the travel bug. For a group of us in Amsterdam, as much as we love this city, UvA’s easter holiday was the perfect opportunity to explore somewhere new. After a while of negotiating the cookies of skyscanner and rome2rio, we found that taking the bus to Brussels then flying to Tirana, Albania was the cheapest option, and to our luck, one of the best, undiscovered places Europe has to offer.

To quickly summarize this country, it felt like the perfect mix of stunning landscapes, crystal clear water and white sandy beaches with the prices next to nothing, and sweetest, kindest locals, and best of all, a lack of any mainstream, Western tourists.

Our trip started with a whistle stop tour of Brussels, tasting a few Belgian beers and shopping around until our bus to the airport called. The flight wasn’t busy and relatively smooth for WizzAir, landing us in the capital, Tirana, on a calm Tuesday evening. We rented a car and drove to our airbnb, which for a great location in the capital city, only cost us 23 euros each for 2 nights. We learned that this is pretty average for Albania. All throughout our walks around the city, up the cable cars in Tiranas Dajti Mountain, or our fancy dinners out, nothing cost us more than £5-10 each.

Our plan was a road trip down towards the South of Albania as we only had five days. But, if you have more time then the North is also meant to have amazing rivers and canyons to explore too. Our drive down was effortlessly easy, with beautiful coastlines, mountains and even cute herds of goats to stopping us in our tracks. Our hunt for lunch near Dhermi led us to a remote beach front, where they were still building a few of the beach bars, and so we were the only tourists around. It felt like finding a secret oasis and keeping it all to ourselves.

After a few tight roads, we finally found our airbnb in Sarande, a stunning coastal town in the South of Albania. Our days here consisted of more remote beach findings and gorgeous drives to sunset spots, as well as stumbling upon Ksamil’s beach bars which apparently in high season are super busy, but in May, even though the weather is still scorching, are only half full. We treated ourselves to it all here as the prices were astronomically cheap, especially compared to Amsterdam prices.

On our last day, we decided to see as much as we could on our drive back to Tirana. We stopped off at the infamous Blue Eye, which was very cool though the scooters there were probably the more entertaining part of that trip. Our stop at the UNESCO heritage town, Gijrokaster was incredible, as we walked around this ancient ruins-looking town, we were met with such smiles by the locals and made the last day so special.

The drive back to Tirana was again, super easy, and we definitely would recommend hiring a car as the best way of seeing this country as it allows such flexibility with the trip. What stayed with us was how kind and friendly everyone was to us, and how ‘undiscovered’ and empty some of these spots are, truly hidden gems compared to the overcrowded beaches of Italy or Portugal for example, and half the price. So, if it’s not already obvious enough, we could not recommend this country more, and already can picture ourselves travelling back to explore the Northern parts!