After 15 days in Tirana and quite a few day trips, I needed a bit of a rest. The last three days in Albania were not about sights or discoveries — they were about winding down, cleaning up, and looking back at three weeks in a city that started as a stranger and ended as something closer to home.

✋ Unwind — Day 16: Lotus Spa

Day 16 I spent at Lotus Spa getting a massage. I visited twice during my stay in Tirana, and that tells you it’s good. The storefront looks deceiving — small and inconspicuous from the street. But there’s an elevator that takes you down to a wondrous maze of hammam baths, massage rooms, and saunas. You descend into a different world, one that exists entirely below street level, where the noise of Tirana disappears and all that’s left is steam, warm stone, and the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing.

✋ Unwind — Day 17: Cleaning House

Day 17 was less glamorous but just as necessary. I cleaned my apartment — I like to leave a place in the same condition I found it. I did laundry. I finished cooking all my groceries. I took the trash out. These are the small rituals of departure, the things nobody posts about but everyone does. You scrub the sink, you fold the towels, you eat the last of the bacon. You close a chapter with your hands.

🧭 Wander — Day 18: The Best of Tirana

Day 18 is a day of reflection. After three weeks, you know a place well enough to have favorites — not the guidebook picks, but the ones you returned to, the ones you’d recommend to a friend arriving tomorrow. So here they are.

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👅 Best Albanian Food — Tymi (King Pils)

For Albanian food, this was my go-to. I ate here at least three times. The Kosovo sausage alone — peppery, spicy, unforgettable — was worth the first visit. The rest of the menu kept me coming back. Tymi is the kind of place where you stop looking at the menu because you already trust the kitchen.

👅 Best Burger — Delibros

Fresh ground beef. Fresh-baked buns. Delibros, a variety of options. I ate here twice, and I declared it the best burger in Albania on Day 3. Nothing since has challenged that verdict. “Meet Mastery.” They meant it.

👅 Best Pizza — Vila 7

There are a ton of pizza places in Tirana, but most are average. My personal bias is a preference for fire-wood-oven-cooked pizza. Vila 7 was a late find — I only ate here on my last day. If I had known about it sooner, I would have been here more often. The lesson: always ask a local about pizza before your second-to-last meal.

👅 Best Coffee Shop — Mon Chéri

Partly because these are all over Tirana, but also because the coffee, pastries, and other offerings are excellent. The staff was always friendly and helpful. I became a regular here almost by accident — it was just the closest good coffee — and by the end, the barista knew my order. That’s the sign of a place that earned its spot.

✋ Best Spa — Lotus Spa

Already covered — but it bears repeating. The elevator ride down is the threshold between two worlds. I went twice. I’d go a third time if I could.

🧭 Best Day Trip — Lake Ohrid (North Macedonia)

Lake Ohrid was my favorite day trip from Tirana. A big, beautiful lake surrounded by majestic views of mountains. Plenty of restaurants, shops, sunbathing, swimming, boating, and other activities. It’s a different country, a different lake, a different scale entirely from Bovilla. Ohrid is what happens when nature and civilization decide to coexist beautifully for a few thousand years.

👂 Best Show — Albanian Nights

Albanian Nights is a great show based on a wedding that showcases Albanian culture through the generations. Accordion. Clarinet. Oud. Hand drum. The audience gets up and dances. They shout “opa.” It’s immersive in a way that scripted theatre almost never is — because at some point, it stops being a show and becomes an actual celebration that tourists have been invited to join.

👁 Best UNESCO Site Visit — Berat

There is something mystical about Berat. That is all I am going to say about that.

Sometimes brevity is the best review. The City of a Thousand Windows. The palm tree bench. The castle with 2,600 years of history. If you only take one day trip from Tirana, make it Berat. But I’m not going to explain why. You’ll know when you sit under the palm tree.

👅 Best Bakery — Furrë Bukë Noel Prodhim-Shitje

My bias is this was a block from my apartment. But the fresh-baked bread never let me down, and there was a large volume of people buying bread here throughout the day — which tells you it’s good. Seven varieties advertised. One variety actually handed to you. The Curry Principle in action. 130 Lek. I’ll miss walking there in the morning.

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🧭 Wander — Leaving Albania

I leave Albania tomorrow morning for a new country and new adventures. I was irked by all the smoking — second-highest rate in Europe, enforced almost nowhere, the Sauppler™ effect a constant companion. But beyond that, I like this country. I like its women running the economy while the men emigrated. I like its fortresses that broke empires. I like its bakeries that hand you the same excellent bread no matter what you order. I like its 15-year-old waiters with strategic life plans and its footballers who buy back stolen Greek gods at Christie’s.

I am still here, but I am already starting to miss this place.

Three weeks in Tirana. Eighteen days chronicled. A fry crisis solved. A cooking class taken. A wedding danced at. A city that started foreign and ended familiar. Next stop: a new country, a new language, a new set of problems to solve and bread to discover. But Albania — Shkoder to Tirana to Berat to Kruja — you were the first leg of something bigger, and you set the bar high.

By the Numbers

Item	Amount (EUR)
Lotus Spa — massage (Day 16)	€50
Vila 7 — pizza (Day 18)	€10
Weekend Total	€60

Faleminderit, Shqipëri. You smoked too much and charged too much for some apartments, but you gave me 18 days I’ll be writing about for years.