TIRANA

Today we travelled into Tirana the Capital of Albania for an overnight stay so that we could take in some of the sights. We found out that Tirana is a lovely city with Ottoman, Fascist and Soviet era architecture. Skanderbeg Square which is the main focal point of the city is huge and a beautiful sight to see. Unfortunately a photo couldn't do it justice.

Concrete bunkers can be seen all across Albania, which were built between the 1960's and 1980's. A total of 173,371 bunkers were created approximating 5.7 per square kilometre. Most of them were abandoned following the collapse of communism in 1990 and many of them are derelict or have been reused for other purposes. We visited Bunk'Art 2 which is a huge bunker which has been made into an underground museum detailing the Albanian Ministry of Internal Affairs from 1912 to 1991 and is a dedication to the victims of communist terror. The sheer size when you get underground was astounding.

We visited many other sights around the city and finished the evening with a curry at Chakra Jone, Albania's only Indian Restaurant. As a lover of Indian food I just had to visit this restaurant and it was a lovely end to the day.