Day 1

Nice 12 hour flight from LAX to Vienna. Austrian airlines business class was nice. Easy 1 hour flight from Vienna to Tirana. The car ride from airport to hotel was long due to road closures. There is a 2 day meeting here of NATO heads. Our hotel (Rogner) is great – at least 4.5 star. After checking in we walked. Even though Albania is a Muslim majority country there is no shortage of bars and outdoor cafes serving drinks, and very few women cover their heads. We read that Tirana is not a very interesting city because most of its Ottoman architecture is gone, and the grand downtown buildings and wide avenues built by the Italians between 1920 and 1936 occupy just a small part of the city. The rest is mostly post-communist junk. Even though this is true, we were pleasantly surprised by the vibrant outdoor life, lots of parks and greenery and some nice, modern architecture, and also by the friendliness of the people. When we were trying to figure out how to walk around the closures in the main square (Skandenberg), a young man approached us and not only told us about where to go, but also a gave us history lecture and outlined a tour of the downtown area for us. A little later we were trying to pay for a 60 lek bottle of water with a 5000 lek banknote because that’s all we had. The shopkeeper didn’t have change so he gave us the bottle for free. We were also most impressed by the traffic lights. The whole supporting structure has little led lights that change color when the light changes. Brilliant!

Comments

  1. MelSeptember 17, 2017 at 1:05 PM

    OK... I love the Traffic lights... we should do that here!!!

    ReplyDelete

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