Day 1-3: Durrës slow life

While A has some administrative work to with his father, I relax into Albanian slow life with the kids and Adi's mom.

Durrës is a crowded and lively seaside city, the second most populous in the country after Tirana.

It offers countless restaurants, café's and bars. You may wonder how they all manage to fill up their tables, but they do! "Having a coffee together" is the default social activity around here.

Sunset at Durrës seafront

We stayed in Hotel Nais Beach - we return here on all our visits to Albania - one of the many hotels at the city beach. It is a modern hotel with spacious rooms and all comfort you need. During the day we stayed at the beach of Hotel Aragosta, where sun beds and parasols are available for payment. There is also a free beach more towards the city centre but I would not recommend it: looks much less attractive and it is anyway too hot under the sun unless you carry your own equipment to make shade.

Do not miss to try some grilled corn! They bake it on the spot, pushing around their stove in the sand.

Grilling corn on the beach

Cheap and good quality lunch is available at any beachfront hotel. We ate at Aragosta, 4 Stinët, and in the evening at Rimini (pizza), and Gusto di Mare. Many people had lived and worked in Italy before and have come back to import Italian cuisine. Therefore, all these places serve quality italian-style food: risotto or pasta as first dish (more than enough for main course!) and fresh fish or meat as second dish.

Lunch under the fig trees

However, my most memorable lunch experience is a small, hidden place on the other side of the beach just 200m further away from the city center. The place itself looks like it has not changed for the last 30 years with its old terrace furniture; except that giant grape and fig plants have grown all above the tables, providing cool shade and amazing smell while you are waiting for your meal. Food is again Italian, delicious and abundant.

If you wish for something more exclusive and elegant for dinner, you can try Pastarella. You need to take a side-street of the main road, Riga Xhamia and ride the elevator that opens right from the street. While all other restaurants pretty much serve the same Italian dishes, Pastarella is more creative both in presentation and combinations of ingedients (I might say fusing Italian and Asian cuisine in certain dishes).

In the evenings locals enjoy a stroll along the coast or towards the city center. The city is most beautiful in the dark, with the nicely designed illumination of public spaces as well as the attractive bars!

They say about New York that the city never sleeps. Well, Durrës neither! Getting a table in the restaurant around 9:30pm is completely normal. They do close the kitchen after a while, but they would bake you a pizza at midnight without a problem (I don't mean Pizza Hut or Domino's); and the seafront playground is as busy with children as it can get even at 11pm.

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