Berat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, fascinated us with its beautiful historic buildings and a fortified city on top of the hill overlooking the narrow valley.
We had spent the night at the centre of Berat, parked next to the river. From there we started to stroll through the narrow alleys between all the historic houses.
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| A nice lady was selling different kind of jams |
Finally, we managed to find the route to reach the fortified city on top of the hill. The houses inside these walls are still lived in, many turned into little hotels, restaurants or souvenir shops.
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| Byzantine Holy Trinity Church from the 13th century |
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| Valley of the river Osum |
From Berat we drove to Tirana, the capital of Albania, a lively city full of contrasts. The traffic in the city was crazy. We already had the impression that the Albanians drive differently, much more aggressively as in the countries we had recently been, like Greece and Turkey. In the city the craziness was turned up a notch, giving the feeling that you are surrounded by bumper cars, which try to use every little gap to get through, ignoring most of the common traffic rules.
Two lane streets were permanently blocked by parking cars, pedestrians, cyclists and scooters were using every gap, even driving in the wrong direction. We were relieved when we reached the parking close to the centre which we had found on Park4night. More about Tirana on our next post!
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| Parking for the Night |