Day trips & sights

Permet and the Benja Thermal Springs

Stone pools of warm mineral water beside a river, under an Ottoman bridge, in a valley almost nobody routes through. What it is and how to get there.

Kruje Day Trip: Castle, Old Bazaar and Skanderbeg

The easiest half day out of Tirana, and the one that explains why Albanians talk about Skanderbeg. A castle on a cliff, a restored Ottoman bazaar, and a hard sell.

Ohrid: The Day Trip That Means Leaving Albania

A cliffside church, a walkable old town and a monastery with peacocks, all on the North Macedonian side of a lake Albania shares. What the border crossing actually involves, passport by passport.

Durres: A Roman Amphitheatre Under a Modern City

The largest Roman amphitheatre in the Balkans sits in a residential block, half excavated, with a Venetian tower down the road and a long sandy beach behind.

Berat: The City of a Thousand Windows

Two Ottoman quarters facing each other across a river, a castle with people still living inside it, and a nickname that turns out to be literal.

The Blue Eye: A Spring Nobody Has Reached the Bottom Of

A karst spring in southern Albania where the water comes out of the rock at an unknown depth and an impossible colour, half an hour from the coast.