ALBANIA · THE BALKANS
Turquoise bays, stone cities, wild mountains.
Albania runs from Ionian beaches to Ottoman old towns to the peaks of the Accursed Mountains. Tirana, Sarande, Ksamil, Berat, Gjirokaster, Theth and the tours that link them.
Only in Albania
Three places you can only find here.
Beaches and old towns turn up all over the Mediterranean. A bottomless blue spring, a thousand-window stone city and a wild undammed river do not. Build the rest of the trip around these.
Water and ruins
The Blue Eye & Butrint
Syri i Kalter is a karst spring so deep no diver has found the bottom. The water rises an electric, almost unreal blue, ice-cold and glass-clear in the middle of the forest. Half an hour on, Butrint stacks Greek, Roman, Venetian and Ottoman ruins around a lagoon. Both sit just inland from the Sarande beaches.
- 1 Gjirokastra- The Stone City & Blue Eye- The monument of Nature.
- 2 Butrint, Ksamil, Blue Eye, Lekuresi Castle. All-in-one daytrip.
- 3 From Durrës/Golem: Saranda, Ksamil, and Blue Eye Day Trip
Stone and canyon
Berat & the Osumi Canyon
Berat is the city of a thousand windows: white Ottoman houses stacked up both walls of a gorge under a castle people still live inside. An hour east, the Osumi Canyon cuts a deep slot through the rock that you can raft or wade in spring. UNESCO-listed, and unlike anywhere else in the Balkans.
- 1 Berat city UNESCO tour, the Castle & Belshi lake- From Tirana
- 2 Berat-Durres and Belsh Lake, day tour from Tirana
- 3 Berat Tour Osumi Canyons Exploration Lunch Transfer
Wild water
Rafting the wild Vjosa
The Vjosa runs free for hundreds of kilometres with no dams, one of the last truly wild rivers in Europe and now the continent's first Wild River National Park. You raft turquoise water below Permet and Gjirokaster, past hot springs and old Ottoman bridges. There is nothing else like it left on the map.
- 1 Rafting Vjosa River Gjirokastër Albania ARG
- 2 Amazing Horse Riding Experience at Vjosa National Park in Permet
- 3 Rafting Tour in Vjosa Wild River National Park
How to plan it
One country, three very different trips.
Albania packs a coast, a mountain range and a string of old stone cities into a country smaller than Scotland. Most people pick one and build a few days around it.
The one everyone books
Book this one first.
Out of every tour on the site, this is the one travellers reach for before they arrive. If you only lock in a single day before you fly, make it this one.
The big ones
Albania's Most Popular Tours
Berat, Kruja, the Tirana old town and the hikes above the capital. The tours most Albania trips end up built around.
By region
Pick a corner of Albania.
Tirana for the cafes and the bunkers. Sarande and Ksamil for the beaches. Berat and Gjirokaster for the old stone towns. Theth for the mountains.
By tour type
Or pick the kind of day.
A boat if you want the sea caves. A trail if you want the mountains. A long lunch if you want the byrek, the raki and the wine. Plus city walks, canyon rafting and the cross-border day trips.
The wild north
The mountains the old maps marked Accursed.
Theth and Valbona sit deep in the Albanian Alps, linked by a day hike over a high pass and by a ferry that threads the length of Komani Lake. Stone tower houses, ice-cold rivers and some of the last remote country left in Europe. It is the trip people come home talking about.
Plan the Alps →The turquoise south
Days on the Riviera.
Ksamil sits over water so clear people call it the Maldives of Europe, with little islands a short swim off the beach. Sarande is the base. Three ways to spend a day on the Ionian coast.
By boat
Sea caves and the empty island.
Off Vlore, the Karaburun peninsula and Sazan island make up Albania’s only marine national park: blue caves, hidden coves and water you can see straight to the bottom of. The speedboat days we would book first.
At the table
Eat, drink, and learn to cook it.
Byrek and grilled fish, homemade raki poured by the host, mountain wine from Berat. Pull up a chair, or learn to make it yourself. Three half-days worth clearing an afternoon for.
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