Visited Albania (a new country!) with Steph. It was meant to be a trip to Albania and Montenegro, but we cut the trip short because Steph broke her leg while hiking down the Albanian Alps from Valbona to Theth.

Tirana was surprisingly nice – some historic buildings, art, and cultural events.

Albanian food was a pretty good… grilled lamb, pancakes, stews… and Tirana even had a bubble tea shop!

The Albanian countryside and Albanian Alps were beautiful too. But the hiking / tour company could have been more informative and let us know that they were expecting us to carry our luggage with us on the hike… because they didn’t, I even brought a wheelie bag, which I could totally have done without, and had to pay for it to be carried over the Alps by mule…

Towards the end of the trip, I got well acquainted with Albanian hospitals and medical facilities. The people were actually pretty nice and tried to be as helpful as they can, despite the language barrier. Google translate came in really handy! And I had also had the opportunity to eat a lot of burek, have quiet mornings with coffee, explore new, non-touristy streetscapes of Tirana, and benchmark KFC.