All our Albania guides tagged Tirana.
The capital and the coastal south offer completely different trips, and they are far enough apart that most visitors have to choose. A direct comparison.
Iso polyphony is a UNESCO listed singing tradition with no instruments and no conductor, and hearing it properly takes a little more effort than booking a table.
Blloku was sealed off from ordinary Albanians until 1991. Long before the bars open for the night, it runs on coffee, an evening walk called the giro and a stretch of restaurants, and this is what the neighbourhood is actually like by day.
What is worth carrying home from the Albanian capital and what is mass produced tat with an eagle on it, from the bazaar and the castle lane to the malls on the ring road.
The best things to do in Tirana, from the colourful main square and communist-era bunkers to the buzzing Blloku district, cable car mountain views and the city best cafes and food.
The coast is warm and calm, the drives are shorter than the map suggests, and a cable car out of Tirana buys you an afternoon that nobody complains about.
Every way from Tirana Airport to the city centre: the Rinas Express bus, taxi flat rates, car rental at the terminal, and how to continue to Saranda, the Riviera or Shkodra.
Blloku was the sealed compound where the party elite lived, and it is now the loudest few streets in the Balkans. Where else to go and when things start.
A nuclear bunker under a hill, a surveillance museum in a secret police building, a cable car to a mountain, and a restaurant scene nobody expects.
A small capital where everything is walkable, and where the difference between the four central districts is noise, price and how Albanian your street feels.