Day 2 in Tirana began with flour on my hands and ended with a walk through a castle that has been besieged, conquered, married into, and finally demolished by the very empire that built it. Along the way I learned to make four dishes that don’t appear in tourist restaurants, discovered where Albanians buy their olives, and confirmed something I’ve suspected since Shkoder: the real Albanian kitchen isn’t in a restaurant — it’s at a family table, and it’s worth learning by hand.

👅 Palate — The Cooking Class

First stop of the day: a traditional Albanian cooking class at Cooking Class Tirana. Four dishes, each cooked to perfection, each a small education in how Albanians actually eat.

Byrek — Handmade Savoury Pie

The foundation of the Albanian kitchen. Handmade pastry, rolled thin and layered, filled with whatever the season provides — spinach, cheese, meat, or squash. Byrek is everywhere in Albania — breakfast counters, bakeries, street stalls — but making it by hand is a different thing entirely. You feel the dough in your fingers, learn how thin is too thin, how much filling is just right. This is the dish that taught me the lesson I’d been circling all trip: simplicity is where Albanian cooking shines.

Sheqerpare — “Piece of Sugar”

Sheqerpare means “piece of sugar” in Albanian — and that’s exactly what these are. Soft, buttery cookies soaked in sweet syrup until they become impossibly tender. You’ll find them at every celebration in Albania, from weddings to holidays to a simple afternoon coffee.

The name is the recipe’s thesis statement. These cookies don’t pretend to be anything but sweet — but the butter keeps them rich, the syrup keeps them soft, and the result is the kind of thing you can’t eat just one of. I ate several. For research.

Përshesh me Kulac dhe Pulë — Village Chicken with Crumbled Bread

This is real Albanian comfort food — the kind of dish that doesn’t appear in tourist restaurants but sits at the centre of every family table. Kulac is torn and soaked in rich chicken stock with butter and fresh herbs.

This was the revelation of the class. Village chicken, slow-cooked, its stock used to soak torn kulac bread with butter and herbs until everything becomes one soft, savory, deeply comforting whole. No fancy technique. No imported ingredients. Just patience and good bread and a chicken that actually tasted like chicken. This is the dish Yona was defending when she lamented the dying culinary arts.

Bukë Misri — Cornbread

Traditional Albanian cornbread — denser and more rustic than the sweet American version, made to sop up stews and stocks. It’s the humble workhorse of the table, and in the right hands it outshines any sourdough.

If you are interested in signing up for the class, book direct with the owner, Dervis, at this link: https://www.cookingclasstirana.com/

You will have a great time with the host and other class members!

👃 Aroma — The Kalinjot Olive Revelation

Midway through the class, the chef let slip a secret: the best olives in Albania come from Kalinjot, near the southern coast. These are a specific variety — Kalinjot olives — prized for their flavor. If you want to buy them in Tirana, the place to go is the Subashi store, a produce shop the chef swears by. This is the kind of intel you only get by cooking alongside a local — the unadvertised, word-of-mouth coordinates that turn a grocery run into a treasure hunt.

👁 Vista — Tirana Castle (Kalaja e Tiranës)

After the class, I walked through Tirana Castle (Kalaja e Tiranës). I’ll be honest: besides a few shops and restaurants, there wasn’t much to see. But the history is worth knowing, because it explains why there’s so little left.

In 1817, the castle suffered a five-month siege, with serious consequences not only for the fortress but for the whole city. After conquering the castle and trying to settle the peace, the Toptani family married into the Bargjini daughters and partly reconstructed it. But in 1832, the castle was demolished by Ottoman armies led by Mehmet Reshit Pasha, who had ordered the demolition of all castles — a deliberate strategy to break the power of local warlords. Today, only a part of the north bailey and fragments of the south part survive, nicely intertwined with the surrounding infrastructure.

So what you see now is not a ruin in the romantic sense — it’s a fragment, woven into a modern city that grew up around it and, in places, through it. A wall here, a gate there, a café built into a medieval corner. Tirana’s castle didn’t fall to time; it fell to politics, and the city simply absorbed what was left.

🧭 Wander — Toptani Mall and the Walk Home

After the castle, I stopped by the Toptani Mall — the same Toptani family whose name is threaded through the castle’s history now lends it to a shopping center. History has a sense of humor. A bit of shopping, then a walk back to the apartment.

The walk home was its own small gallery — interesting art along the way, the kind of street-level creativity that makes Tirana feel alive. A mural, a sculpture, a painted door. Cities reveal themselves differently on foot, and Tirana rewards the slow route.

By the Numbers

Item	Amount (EUR)
Traditional Albanian cooking class (4 dishes) ($53 USD)	€48.76
Toptani Mall shopping ($60 USD)	€55.20
Day Total	€103.96

Four dishes I can now make at home. A castle that taught me more through its absence than its presence. And a walk through a city that’s still learning how to hold its history. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll track down those Kalinjot olives at Subashi — and, if I’m honest, I still have a potato in my kitchen waiting for the fry experiment.