Easter weekend meant a day off of school which meant traveling for Mark and I 😊This time we are headed to Berat, Albania. Berat's about two and a half hours by bus from Tirana. We woke up Saturday morning, made some breakfast, packed our bags and then headed for Eagle Square. We hopped on a bus and were in Berat in no time. While on the bus we met a peace corps volunteer from California who was traveling from Tirana to Berat, where he is stationed for the next two years. Once we made it to the bus terminal it was just a quick bus trip through the city to the center. The landscape of Berat is incredibly charming- picture mountains in every direction scattered with red roofed homes and shops with a raging river running below.
We walked ten minutes from the center, over the bridge to Hostel Maya.
It has a really nice outdoor space with tables, chairs and outdoor lounge furniture. The dorm beds included privacy curtains and personal lights- score! We dropped our bags and headed out for a walk. The sun was shining and the temperature was in the 60s. Mark and I stopped for a quick snack at Wildor, a cute local spot with a few outdoor tables. We tried chomlek, a local Berati dish made of tender lamb and onions baked in a clay pot and served piping hot with warm bread. It was delicious!
While we were sitting outside we noticed that people kept walking by us with ice cream so after our snack we headed in the direction of the ice cream walkers. Sure enough, we found a cute shop offering cones for 50 lek (the equivalent of 50 cents!!) We shared a cone while walking through the city. We watched the sun set behind the mountains and headed back to our hostel where we met some really friendly travelers. Two of the girls were French, was one Canadian and a third was English. We shared a few beers on the patio while we waited for our hostel to prepare vegetarian lasagna, bread and salad for the communal dinner they were hosting. Everything was really, really yummy. One of the French girls was leaving in the morning after having been at Hostel Maya for two weeks. Everyone was sad to see her go so a group of us went to a nearby bar where we were given complimentary raki (I've wisened up since Greece and didn't accept any 😁) We were back to the hostel and in bed by midnight (my kind of crowd!!)
Sunday morning we ate breakfast at our hostel and then headed to Berat Castle, a fortress built in the 13th century. The hill to get up to the castle is pretty steep so it took Mark and I about 30 minutes to walk it. Shoutout to Rruga Peti for preparing us for this climb! Inside the fortress we found churches, a mosque and many ruins for climbing. The views overlooking the city were beautiful.
On our way down we stopped in an ethnographic museum where we saw traditional clothing, housewares, an olive oil press and blacksmith equipment.
We wandered up and down the cobblestoned streets of the old city and after tiring made our way back across the bridge for some lunch at Antigoni, a restaurant with a view.
We sat outside in the sunshine and shared Berati Schnitzel (a local dish which consisted of beaten pork wrapped in cheese, breaded and then fried) which I didn't like but Mark really enjoyed, and a village salad.
We went back to the hostel so Mark could play chess against the owner, Miri. They played 5 games. Hopefully that means Mark got his fix and won't ask me to play for a little while... wishful thinking. I met a lovely Ukranian woman who has been living in Chicago for the past twenty years so she and I chatted for awhile before Mark and I headed to Hotel Muzaka for dinner. The fergese (a traditional warm dip made with cheese and peppers) was lovely, as was the pasta dish I ordered.
That night we hung out at the hostel with the travelers we had met throughout the weekend. Sunday we enjoyed one last hostel breakfast and then hopped on a bus bound for Tirana. We definitely enjoyed Berat and would love to head back for some water rafting and a winery or two.
No comments:
Post a Comment