Day 3 in Shkoder was a rest day by design — breakfast and lunch at the apartment, burning through the last of my groceries before Tuesday’s departure for Tirana. I spent the afternoon planning the next legs beyond Albania, navigating the uncertainties of ongoing conflicts near some of my destinations. The key, as always, is flexibility. But the day’s real story happened at dinner, at a restaurant called Fisi, where I ate lamb that I will spend the rest of my life trying to find again — and where, once again, I waged war with the cigarette smoke of strangers.

🧭 Wander — Planning in the Gaps

I leave Shkoder on Tuesday and head to Tirana for about three weeks — the longest stay of the trip so far. But beyond Tirana, the map gets complicated. There are ongoing conflicts near some of my planned destinations. Nothing is certain. The itinerary may shift, compress, or reroute entirely.

This is the part of long-term travel that guidebooks don’t cover: the days you spend in your apartment, laptop open, cross-referencing news reports with flight availability, weighing risk against reward, and reminding yourself that the freedom to change course is the plan. Flexibility isn’t a contingency — it’s the structure.

👅 Palate — Dinner at Fisi

For dinner, I went to a recommended restaurant called Fisi (Te Fisi Peja Grill). Traditional Albanian food. After Yona’s 26-dish feast, the bar was impossibly high — but Fisi is a different kind of experience. A restaurant, not a home. And it delivered.

I started with FËRGESE — peppers, tomatoes, curd, garlic, and extra virgin olive oil. 300 Lek. Served warm with fresh-baked bread, the peppers taste earthy and nutritious, the olive oil is unlike anything I’ve had before. The first thing I will do in Tirana is buy a bottle of olive oil from the Berat region. Locals tell me it’s the best in Albania, and the oil on this plate makes a compelling case.

Tragically, the meal is disrupted by the Sauppler™ effect from a nearby smoking ghoul. The cigarette smoke drifts to my table despite him being three tables away. He burns through one stick and lights another. This is the rhythm of dining in Shkoder — you eat between drags of other people’s decisions.

The ghoul leaves just in time. My BAKED LAMB (250g) arrives — served with baked potatoes, sautéed spinach, and al olio sauce. 1,800 Lek. The tables around me are empty now, and I know from experience: if I want to enjoy smoke-free food, I can’t hesitate. I attack it quickly.

The meat has been slow-cooked and is close to melt-in-your-mouth tender. I have had lamb for decades but none that tastes like this one. I can’t even begin to place where this meat came from, but I assume a family farm in the mountains somewhere. I have made a mental taste note in case I ever run into it again outside Albania.

Most of the food Albania produces — including olive oil — is kept and used within the country and rarely exported. This lamb isn’t going to show up on a menu in Houston or London. It belongs here. That’s part of what makes it taste the way it does.

I finish just in time. A young woman with sky-blue eyes and long blond hair lights up a stick, and the smoke drifts to my table. I glare at her. She gets the subtle message and moves further away. Small victory.

The waiter comes by to collect the plates and I ask if the lamb is local. He says every single item on my plate comes from local farms — not one thing imported. The peppers, the curd, the spinach, the oil, the lamb. All of it. Raised, grown, pressed, and cooked within some radius of this table.

🐝 Wander — A Note on Bees

Every single meal I have had in Albania — indoors or outdoors — seems to come with a complimentary bee or two. There are bees everywhere here, which is a testament to the Albanian ecosystem. A place with this many bees is a place where something is still working at the level of soil and flower.

It makes me wonder how many more bees there would be without the constant cigarette smoke. And then it dawns on me:

Perhaps the bees come to me for a breath of fresh air, since I am probably the only person in Albania who doesn’t smoke.

I’m only half joking. When you spend enough time in a country where smoking is the default and clean air is the exception, you start to see yourself differently. You’re not just a non-smoker — you’re a sanctuary.

By the Numbers

Item	Amount (EUR)
FËRGESE starter + bread (300 ALL)	€2.87
Baked lamb 250g + potatoes + spinach (1,800 ALL)	€17.22
Coca Cola x2	€4.30
Dinner Total	€24.39

The sun is going down and it’s time to head back to the apartment. Tomorrow is my last full day in Shkoder. It’s been a unique experience — a city of 26 dishes and 26 cells, of magic benches and smoking ghouls, of bees that might just be looking for someone who doesn’t exhale toxins. I came here for a few days and I’m leaving with a mental taste note for lamb I may never taste again.