On the road again. Just can't wait to get on the road again. This time to Shkodër, Albania. After a hectic week at work it was great to leave school and take a relaxing dusk walk with my pack.
I reached Mark's office 20 minutes later. We grabbed a quick souvlaki before taxi-ing to the bus station. Unfortunately, when we reached the bus station, we were told that the Shkodër buses were finished for the evening. We'd fallen for this trick before, so we walked around the entire bus station searching for a bus to Shkodër. After being assured by four different groups of people that the Shkodër buses were in fact finished, we sucked it up and split a taxi with another traveler. Our driver had the windows down, a cigarette in one hand and B52 in the other, which I could handle, however, when he decided to prop his phone between the dash and the windshield so he could watch TV while driving, I had to interject. I was not about to die by the hands of a tv watching taxi driver. After being safely dropped off in Shkodër Mark and I checked in to Hotel Kaduku. Callie and Andrew, our friends from Prishtina, were only about an hour behind us. I caught up on my news stories for the week while Mark played a crash and burn car game on his phone. When Callie and Andrew arrived we headed to the pedestrian walking street where most of the bars were pretty empty (it's still considered "off season" after all, and there wasn't a football match scheduled at the stadium). We continued walking and finally found a bar that was packed (clearly everyone heads to the same place during off season) but managed to find a four person table nestled in the middle. The English music was great (albeit a bit loud), the beers were tasty and the pizza was delicious, however, the smoke inside was terrible. It's something I've really come to take for granted in the US (the law that bans smoking inside public places). After sitting inside a crowded bar all night, with smokers everywhere, my clothes, my hair, my coat, my everything, reeked.
The four of us met for breakfast in our hotel the next morning and then set out for Rozafa Castle. There is a legend among the Albanians about the building of the castle, and it goes a little something like this:
The castle grounds were lush and green, and weren't very crowded. We explored in the sunshine for most of the morning.
After enjoying the stone work, and beautiful views from the castle roofs, we had lunch at an outdoor pub along the water. We went back to our hotel for a late afternoon nap (it is vacation after all!) before heading out for the evening. Callie found a great bar/restaurant called cliche that was pretty full when we arrived. We found a table in the back and ordered a round of fancy, fruit cocktails to get our night started. We played cards and dominoes, and had one more round of cocktails, before ordering dinner. After, we went back to the pedestrian street and tried to find a place to grab a few more drinks. We went to a few different places, but they were either really smoky, really clubby or really dead. We finally circled back to retro pub, which had one room that was super crowded and one room that was a bit more empty. Little did we know, 30 minutes later, we would be wall to wall, shoulder to shoulder, table to table, with 100s of people crowding in to enjoy a dj. Tables were being hoisted overhead and inserted into places there simply wasn't room. Smokers were waving cigarettes and waiters were squeezing through with trays above their heads. One drink was more than sufficient in this type of atmosphere, so we left and headed to the corner store. Wine bottles, beer cans and snacks were coming back to Hotel Kaduku with us. We played jackbox in our jammies and enjoyed some bevs from the peace and quiet of our beds. #thisis30 #sorrynotsorry
Sunday morning the four of us enjoyed breakfast together at the hotel before heading out to do a little shopping on the pedestrian street. Mark and I then got the bus back to Tirana (yay for actually making the bus this time!) It dropped us at Casa Italia (a big outlet mall on the opposite side of Tirana) so we went inside for a quick lunch and to do a little exploring before heading back home. It was a fun weekend spent exploring with friends.
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