Somewhere between the cobbled stones and the quiet hills, a deep peace came over me. I realised this trip wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just a journey through Albania\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit was a gentle farewell to my twenties. That chapter wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t officially over for another six months, but I could feel the closing credits starting to roll. I smiled to myself, thinking about all the places I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been, the people I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d met, the adventures I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d stumbled into. No regrets\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwell, maybe just a few\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another story.<\/p>\n
Back to Berat. I loved it.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a low-key kind of place, the kind that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ask anything from you. No checklist, no pressure to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153do\u00e2\u20ac\u009d it right. The best way to explore is simply to wander.<\/p>\n By day, the streets were alive in their own subtle way: kids playing, grandmothers balancing baskets of fresh produce, donkeys grazing by the roadside, fruit sellers calling out their prices. Locals often stopped to ask why I came to Albania and whether I liked it. Most didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t speak much English, but the younger ones eagerly practiced what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d learned in school. Among the older generation, Italian or German was your best bet for conversation.<\/p>\n A relatively easy hike up the hill leads to the castle that overlooks Berat. Inside the ancient walls, an entire neighborhood still exists\u00e2\u20ac\u201dKalasa<\/strong>. Picture whitewashed stone houses with flowering courtyards and fruit trees, old ladies selling bobbin lace and homemade jam from seasonal fruit. Everything felt so pure, so timeless.<\/p>\n Lose yourself in Kalasa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s winding streets, and eventually you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll end up at the ruins of the Inner Fortress. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where the best views await\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsweeping vistas over Berat and the surrounding valley. A stop in the tiny Onufri Museum<\/strong>, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth the \u00e2\u201a\u00ac2 entry (especially if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got the place to yourself).<\/p>\n Take your time. Stop often. Sip Albanian coffee. Try all the food. I was invited into local homes for coffee more than once\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfree, yes, but with a strong moral obligation to buy at least a jar of sweet, homemade jam in return. A fair trade, if you ask me.<\/p>\n Each time I returned to my hostel, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d stop at the same fruit stand to contribute to the local economy and buy a few pomegranates and apples\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddirt cheap and impossibly juicy. Resistance was futile.<\/p>\n I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what Berat is like in summer (probably bursting with visitors), but in October<\/strong>, it was nothing short of perfect.<\/p>\n The Town of a Thousand Windows<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhat an enchanting place.<\/p>\n The post “Visit Berat Albania and weep<\/a>” first appeared on Travel Cake<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Weeping in the name of overwhelming charm and beauty is a thing, right? Well, it was for me. I definitely had to hold back a tear or two. Maybe they were just tears of general happiness\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor maybe it was the setting I found myself in. Berat was nearly deserted. Tourist season had long since ended, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[38,11,20,27],"country":[209],"class_list":["post-2216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-albania","tag-backpacking","tag-europe","tag-off-the-beaten-track","tag-photo-essay","post_format-post-format-image","country-albania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2216"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5011,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216\/revisions\/5011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2216"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelcake.net\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=2216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Berat](\"https:\/\/travelcake.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/WALK3.jpg\")
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\nDoes Berat seem like a place you’d want to go?<\/strong><\/p>\n