Berat buying snow

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Berat buying snow

Belarus Practical Guide Minsk. Balaton Budapest. Macedonian Wine Ohrid Skopje. Antwerp Flanders Top-5 Destinations. Haifa vs. DMZ Zone. Bohol Manila. Cappadocia Edirne Istanbul Kars. Not in the story-mood? As such, Berat was an unavoidable stop on my 1-month Albania itinerary. The unique architectural style and multi-layered influences dating back to a variety of timelines characterize this extraordinary town, whilst inviting for an extensive and thorough stroll. Kala The Kala, also referred to as the Citadel , Old Town or Castle Quarter, is possibly the most prominent area of Berat, proudly towering above the city… providing hands down the best views in town. Entirely in theme, it also houses the Onufri Iconography Museum , in case religious icons excite you. Fun Fact 2: You are charged an entry fee if you walk in from the main north-side entrance… but there are also three smaller unguarded entrances all around, where you can simply walk in for free one is marked on Maps. Too busy to read now? No problem, save it for later! This section of the town could be considered the most distinctive of Berat, portrayed as one of its main images in travel guides and promotion materials alike. Expect to find traditional scenes of white stone houses bordering swirling alleys, the sun glimmering in early sunrise over the terracotta rooftops. The what?! The Helveti form an Islamic brotherhood of the Sufi order. The Helveti Teqe includes some delicate tilework as well as chambers with detailed carved wooden ceilings. On the border of the Mangalem, on the way up to the castle, you can halt for a quick stop at the Ethnographic Museum. Sure, it provides a rapid insight in Albanian customs and traditional practices… but if you have already visited one of the many ethnographic museums elsewhere in the country, it adds very little to it, especially for the rather steep entry price they charge. This neighbourhood is entirely Christian, and as such includes sights like the St. Spiridon Basilica and Church of St. It must be mentioned that Berat is one of the many cities in Albania where, surprisingly enough, Islam and Christianity have been coexisting in a more or less peaceful manner. The Gorica area underwent a thorough reconstruction after it was almost wiped off the face of the Earth by a severe earthquake in Since then, the lower area is defined by freely placed buildings, whereas the dwellings get tucked closer to one another the more you ascend up the hill. Day Trips From Berat Discovering Berat will demand at least 2 days of your travel time… but why stop there? If you truly planned your trip well, you made sure to rent a car to uncover the more hidden secrets of Albania. There are plenty of interesting sights scattered around Berat that are extremely complicated to visit by means of public transport. Personally, I strongly recommend hiring a vehicle at Rental Car Shokdra , with whom I have an excellent experience. They provided me with a reliable car, as well as readily available customer service matching the overall high level of friendliness and hospitality the Albanians are famous for. More than just another mountain to hike on, Tomorr has a strong symbolical and mythological meaning in Albanian folklore as well as in the Pagan, Christian and Islamic religions. Thousands of pilgrims flock around the mighty, rugged peak each year, ready to take on the strenuous hike up to the m elevation. Apparently, the area is also well-known for its frequent storms… which I experienced first-hand: During my visit I was tormented by a horizontal hailstorm slapping me right in the face and blocking all views… A real party-pooper for any hiking plans! I'm talking out of experience, as we had to turn around. Trails can be found here. If you have more luck than me Photo credits: Chasing the Donkey. The upside is that, well… they serve wine! Over time, Apollonia gradually gained political independence from Corinth and was eventually organized as a city operating under an oligarchic system. When the Romans took over, the town turned into a crucial military staging ground, as well as a cultural center gaining fame for its prestigious school of philosophy… one of its students being Augustus, the fist Roman Emperor. The relevance of Apollonia began to decline in the 3d Century AD, when its harbor silted up due to an earthquake… and it was eventually fully abandoned in the 4th Century AD. It's good to know that the site is very widespread, demanding a full hiking day for a complete exploration. This area does contain the most dense collection of archaeological restored remains, incl. The information signs are written in such flawed English that it is impossible to follow any storyline or explanation, and the provided location-maps are actually mirrored, which is thoroughly confusing. From the hilltop also stare at the opposite mountain range. The observing eye can trace down some openings, which were in fact the ammunition storages, even hiding tanks. What an awesome find! Start of slow expansion Ottoman Rule. Conversion to Islam. Nov Independence of Albania declared. Albania recognized as independent state: Demographics were ignored, half Albanian inhabited territories divided among Montenegro, Serbia and Greece. Hoxha new leader: Brutal Stalinist rule for 40 years, mass murders, people being unable to enter or exit Albania. SU and China ties broken over ideologist ideas. Many flee. Photo by Miles Watson Photography. Spiridon; Dimal Antic City. Roshniku Festival folklore — September. Vesta e Veres wine — September. There are luckily quite some local vegetarian dishes, some already explained above. You can find the vegetarian restaurants of Berat here. National Drink: Rakia. Albania has wine production, but not as prominent as in Montenegro or Macedonia. I personally found the best deals on Booking. If you use it often enough, Genius-discounts are applied. Payment generally happens on-site in cash. Couchsurfing: allows you to stay with locals. Nowadays it has a moderate sign-up cost unless you put a third-world country as homebase , but paying extra for verification is unnecessary: Positive reviews are way more important. In order to get accepted, make sure to write an elaborate review explaining why you applied to this specific profile and think you and your potential host are a good match copy-pastes tend to be ignored. There are many different websites, most of them paid, the main one being Trusted Housesitters … but once you landed a sit, the subscription fee pays itself back quickly. Crime rates are low and the level of hospitality is heart-warming. People go out of their way to make you feel welcome and assist you in any way they can. Tap Water: is drinkable. Your Italian language skills might help! Due to long, recent occupation periods by Italians check the History Recap many Albanians speak some basic Italian. Transport Walking: The centre of Berat is rather compact, and most sights can be reached on foot. However, the area around the castle requires a steep hike up. Cycling: Cycling is possible around this area. From the intercity bus station you can catch the blue bus 1 to the city center. Negotiate the price in advance, or asked to have the meter turned on. Intercity Buses: Bus schedules vary constantly and online info is unreliable, so I recommend buying bus tickets a day in advance at the bus station to be certain of the available departure times. Train: Not available. Hitchhiking: is relatively safe in Albania, and especially in the countryside you can see even locals doing it. Find more info on Hitchwiki. Take into account that English is not widely spoken Italian is! This service is and will remain free.

Berat buying snow

You can edit the text in this area, and change where the contact form on the right submits to, by entering edit mode using the modes on the bottom right. Louise currently resides in Adelaide, South Australia with her husband. Our ride into Albania is at the end of a brutal day. Post about Montenegro coming soon. We have 20 km more to ride and it is flat all the way to Shkoder. We stop for a phone card, and a city map, and easily make our way to Green Garden Hostel, where Warmshowers guests are welcome, and offered the first night camping for free. Warmshowers is an international group of cyclists who host, or are hosted by, other Warmshowers members. We are told there are still rooms available, and because we will be in Shkoder for two nights, and we like comfort; we skip the free back-yard camping and choose a room. A day off the bikes! We take a walk into Shkoder centre; passing vendors who have set up temporary stalls on the edge of the wide footpath, beside the road. Typical wares for sale include fruit and vegetables, knick knacks, plastic wares, piles of tobacco, filters and paper, second hand clothes, and shoes. We also pass two streets of market stalls piled deep with second-hand clothing. We have another three days off the bikes, as we take a minibus to Theth and hike from Theth to Valbone and then a ferry on Lake Komani. See photo below. You can read about that trip here. After much discussion about temporarily lightening our loads by storing our camping gear and warm clothing, having studied maps, terrain and altitude, we have decided to head south tomorrow; with everything! I am very conscious that there will be hills, but will worry about that later. Difficulties will be the climbing and the heat, now forecast at over 30C that is typical for this time of year. In reality, what is there to organise when your home is in the panniers, there are shops along the way, and the washing can be dry in two hours? Around 85 km of mostly flat riding. The easiest route south is the main highway. As we moved through the rural landscape of cornfields, and small farms, the traffic was mostly courteous; giving plenty of room as they passed and many trucks and buses gave a gentle warning toot. It was helpful to have the mirrors and keep an eye on what vehicles were coming from behind. There is a very steep gravel path something the locals would have made for a shortcut from the flyover we are on, down to the road we want. The bikes are unloaded. Slipping and sliding we make numerous trips to transfer everything from one road to the other. This minor road is more to our liking. We pass through a couple of villages that have acres of buildings and brick chimney stacks, in various stages of ruin. Evidently when the country was under the Communist regime, there was a lot of industry; steel, woollen, and cotton mills. Now it is long gone, and some urban areas are looking quite forlorn. There is a lot of unemployment in Albania. There was also a boom in high rise accommodation that was built for the people who came from the countryside to work in the factories. These unattractive buildings on the outer suburbs of most cities are still used as housing. Nev went to Booking. The afternoon heat continues to intensify. The road surface fluctuates between new seal and potholes, then to newly laid, firm, pressed rock, and later deteriorates further, to many kilometres of potholes and road works. There is a car wash ahead, so I go in for another drenching. With a name like that, it must be high. Wracking sobs overwhelm me! I always wear glasses! Nev rides on, and I begin pushing my bike. I am so thankful for his kindness! Nev has parked his bike at the bottom, on the castle cobblestones, and is trying to decide which of the three directions is the correct way. A car pulls up and a young man asks if he can help. It happens he is from Emiliano where we are staying. He phones his brother, who comes to guide us. The other three directions are uninterupted views of at least 30 kilometres, out to the ocean, and south to beyond Tirane. We are at the top of a hill, within the perimeter of an old castle, staying in a family home that is years old, and being served by the fifth generation of inhabitants. Today we will not be riding. The National Skanderbeg museum there, gives a good perspective of Albanian history. Albania has been inhabited by people, the Illyrians Indo-European tribes from antiquity. Serbians, Ottomans, Italians, and Greeks. In Albania was admitted to the League of Nations as a sovereign independent state. Even up to the 2nd world war Albania was being carved up and dished out to neighboring countries. He reconverted to Christianity and for 25 years he lead many rebellions against the Ottomans, that continued even after his death. He has been recognised as a hero in many Western European countries as a model of Christian resistance against Muslims! A man immediately waves, and with his fingers circled before his eyes, demonstrates he has my glasses. He indicates for me to wait, goes up the road beside the car wash, and returns with them. I am so grateful, and he will not accept any thanks other than the words, and the kiss that I blow in his direction as we ride away. The route to Tirana the capital is quite straight-forward. Through the city centre there is a designated cycle path, although navigating some of the roundabouts is challenging. Soon we are out the other side. We are not stopping as we will be coming back this way. Not very satisfying food but we appear to have passed all shops, other than bakeries. We have a climb out of Tirana and onto a secondary road through Rolling Hills. This is a new suburb with grand houses and an International school nearby. The climbs are really steep! Nev doesn't seem to know where we are. We end up following the course that he created using the Komoot APP, and end up bouncing our way down a trail that would be suitable for tractors, eventually dropping into Mullet. It is still not clear what road we should be on, but we can both see a motorway on our right; and that is where we are heading. For much of the morning, my view has been of the bitumen immediately before me, making sure I keep as close as possible to Nev in front, to minimise overtaking time for vehicles, and also as close as possible to the white line delineating the road edge. There are constant quick glances at the rear-view mirror to check what is coming from behind. Decisions then need to be made. Can the vehicle overtake us easily. If there is on-coming traffic, will we need to move into the gravel for those coming from behind to overtake, or will we need to stop completely. Nev pulls into a lay-by for a drink from his water bottle. We are almost at the top of the climbing for today. We are also each given a huge glass of iced water, that dilutes the alcohol significantly. As we begin to drop into the valley there is a sign about a tunnel. Tractors and bicycles must not enter, but are to take the road towards Gracen. The road to Gracen completely bypasses Mushqeta and begins with a climb, and then continues climbing for 12 km. We pass a few grand residences, that appear to have been abandoned. Finally we get to the restaurant, that, when we turned onto this road, a bill-board had displayed as being 3 km! We take the opportunity to fill up all of our water bottles from the fountain in front of the restaurant. Evidently we still have 23km to go to Elbasen! It was only 22km to Elbasan from the tunnel! The road continues undulating along the ridge, with stunning views and then at last we begin descending. The long 12 km descent follows a ridge only as wide as the road, so we have views on both sides, when we dare to cast a peripheral glance. We ride with some care, as we share the road with goats watched by their herders, donkeys rolling in the dust, the occasional horse grazing, chickens flapping roadside, and the pair of cows that each rural family appears to own, being moved for milking. There are also a few switchback corners that keep us from having a blast, and the occasional pothole that has been repaired to overflowing, so large bumps of concrete are bounced over. Our host at Landis offers us a very large beer and his wife makes us a simple meal. We are happy to make our way early to the tent and leave our host with his family who are celebrating a birthday, in the bar. Bar Landis is unique as it has camping on the side as well as offering locals the opportunity to have a drink while their car is being washed by hand. Breakfast of Pilaf and Fried Eggs hits the spot and we are off again for a couple of kilometres in the wrong direction before Nev realises we should have turned off. This will be rectified before we ride another day! With our course corrected we continue on main roads. There is little traffic, the road is wide and there is also a wide shoulder. The climbs are long and steady, the surface is usually good, in fact some of the bitumen is so new, there are no road markings, and I feel like I might be the first person to travel on it. One of the descents is memorable because it was so long, with few corners, and at a gradient where we could roll at quite a good speed without ever braking. It brought a smile to my face on a day that fascilated between negativity and positivity, probably in accordance with whether I was climbing or descending hills. Our travel is through a few small villages. There is a noticeable number of abandoned houses. In some places there are many new, partly built houses. Some of these are quite grand. We are later told that many Albanians live and work in other countries, and send back money to family, so building progress is likely, subject to these contributions. We pass many homes with the cut bushes of what smells like thyme possibly mountain tea , drying in the sun on tarpaulins spread on the roadside, sometimes taking the space to the centre line! Our progress is good, traffic is light, surroundings are interesting, all the while the day gets increasingly hotter until by it is 36 degrees. We stop briefly for photos of nodding donkeys. Some are very old, looking neglected and appear to not be operating. Some have muddy oil around the structure. In one village we rode through, one is nodding away in the centre of the car-park area. Evidently Albania is rich in petroleum and gas resources. The heat is intense so just 5 km from Berat we take a long break to sit in the shade and buy cold water that we drink in copious amounts. We arrive in Berat around 1 pm. We think our accommodation is in the old town. Sure enough it is but not down near the river, the road looks to be quite near the top of the hill on our left. We check Google maps for directions and choose what appears to be the most direct route. It certainly is! Immediately it is slippery shiny uneven flagstones, so we dismount and walk. Pushing the bikes is relatively easy at first but then the gradient becomes so steep that we park one bike and both push the other. Eventually we get to tarmac and Nev reckons he can ride, so he sets off with the intention of finding the guesthouse and then returning to help me. When he gets back, much later, he has still not found the guesthouse, but he has phoned them. Evidently our accommodation is within the castle, not the old town as we had thought. Nev has parked his bike at the castle gate and returned about metres to me. Nev takes my bike and rides, with me pushing for as long as I can keep up. We pay the castle entry fee and are directed to take the middle road. Guesthouse Vasili is at the top! It could be rung out. What was supposed to be a moderately easy day of cycling; turned to custard at the end. We are shown to our room and the adjoining shaded balcony offers a place for recovery with a small breeze. The two night stay we have booked at Guesthouse Vasili is a highlight of our time in Albania. Freddie and his wife Nina are very welcoming and their neighbour and life-time friend, Mickel joins us for each breakfast and evening meal and is our personal translator. Freddie drives us down to Berat city via a route much easier than the one we took evidently our route was the second steepest way , and we visit the ethnological museum and walk the main streets. There is no noticeable tourist population and it is refreshing to note that shops appear to be more to meet the needs of the locals. The castle dates back 2, years and is unique in that there is a well inhabited village within the walls; homes such as the one we are staying at. We have an interesting explore of the fortress perimeter walls, wander around the exterior of a mosque and byzantine church, check out the water cistern and visit inside one of the Orthodox churches that is home to 16th Century iconic paintings by Master Onufri. We have decided to head north and hopefully find cooler riding. With that decision made we decide not to stop in Tirane on our way to Shkodra, even though we change buses there. The large bus from Berat station is very suitable because it has a large luggage compartment underneath. Even so, Nev has to remove the pedals, turn the handle-bars and bag the bikes, in the idworx bags he has been carrying for such an occasion. At Tirane he puts the bikes back together so that we can ride the seven kilometres to the Shkodra bus station. We find ourselves in an empty gravel space. There is a small shed and a man there calls someone over who speaks English. Soon we are back on the bikes returning half the distance we have already ridden to a parking area where there are only mini-buses. Making the connection work for us from Tirane to Shkoder is very challenging as Nev and the driver complete the puzzle of stowing our bikes and gear along with that of other passengers in the very full mini-bus. The day passes quickly with a very easy journey from Berat to Shkoder, where we return to Green Garden Hostel for the third time. Tomorrow we will leave early and ride to Montenegro. In conclusion we had a wonderful time in Albania. In July, the heat combined with the hills made the cycling too challenging for me. We chose accommodation at the lower end of the market and it was always well presented and our hosts were very friendly. Some Albanians have never left Albania, and they are as interested in our home Australia and lifestyle, as much as we are in theirs. We loved the fresh fruit and vegetables. Food is presented as is in season. We found it unusual but not distasteful to have cucumbers, tomatoes and white cheese at every meal, including breakfast. Louise George. Info Email. Statistics for a brutal day: 71km, hrs, m ascent, m descent. View fullsize. It brought a smile to my face on a day that fascilated between negativity and positivity, probably in accordance with whether I was climbing or descending hills Our travel is through a few small villages.

Berat buying snow