Arrive in Tirana and make your own way to the hotel, where you can drop your bags and settle in. Later, meet your Travel Director and fellow small group travelers for an orientation of the local area, passing façades painted in saffron, lime, burgundy and blue beside older villas. Plane trees spread their branches across many of Tirana’s streets, while Mount Dajti climbs beyond the city to the east. Tonight, you may choose to head out for dinner with your fellow travelers and trade first impressions of Albania’s capital over the table.
With your Travel Director, explore Tirana on foot, crossing the pale stone sweep of Skanderbeg Square and following Bulevardi Dëshmorët e Kombit through the heart of the capital. At the Pyramid of Tirana, you’ll trace its broad concrete slopes, scattered with small rooms in bright red, blue, yellow and green. Your free time might be spent over the warmth of an Albanian coffee, or underground at Bunk’Art 2, where the city noise fades away behind heavy concrete doors and narrow corridors lead through rooms once built to shelter Albania’s political elite from nuclear attack. Tonight, you can explore independently or join an Optional Experience dinner and taste the flavors of Albanian cooking.
Leaving Tirana with your Travel Director, you’ll travel through central Albania, vineyards and farmland spreading across the hills on the road to Berat. Here, meet Gladiola in her 250-year-old Ottoman-era home for a MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience, sipping fragrant rose juice and fiery rakija with soft Turkish delight as she shares the customs passed through her family. You’ll also hear how she works with female producers, helping women earn through heritage tourism while traditional skills continue in the hands of the people who practise them. In UNESCO-listed Berat, follow the Osum River beneath the arches of Gorica Bridge and wander Mangalem, where rows of white Ottoman houses and dark timber windows spread across the hillside. In Gjirokastër, you’ll follow the sloping cobbles of its old bazaar past small workshops, carved wooden shopfronts and slate-roofed houses.
Along the Albanian Riviera, you’ll follow the coast towards Porto Palermo, with the Ionian Sea stretching below the road and olive-covered slopes folding towards the water. Perhaps explore the fortress of Ali Pasha on its rocky peninsula, passing through thick walls and vaulted chambers. In Himarë, your free time is yours to spend along the seafront, with fishing boats bobbing offshore and the scent of grilled seafood drifting from nearby tavernas. Continue to Vlorë, set between the Adriatic and Ionian seas, with the Karaburun Peninsula reaching into the water and mountains sweeping inland behind the city.
Vlorë is yours to enjoy as you please, whether that means staying close to the city or heading out across the water. You might choose a speedboat trip into Karaburun-Sazan Marine Park towards Haxhi Ali Cave, where light shimmers across the water inside a limestone chamber carved by the sea. On Sazan Island, Mediterranean vegetation curls around abandoned buildings and tunnels from its years as a restricted military base. Back in Vlorë, you can join an Optional Experience at a local farm and vineyard, tasting Albanian food and wine among the fields where they’re produced.
Leaving Vlorë, you’ll travel north towards Krujë, watching the land lift towards the slopes of Mount Kruja. With your Travel Director, wander through its 17th-century bazaar, brushing past woven carpets, polished copper and carved wood as filigree jewelry and hand-worked crafts fill the narrow shops. Follow the old lanes towards the fortress, once Skanderbeg’s stronghold against the Ottoman Empire, and pause where the land falls away towards the plains and the distant deep blue Adriatic. With free time in Krujë, you can return to the bazaar, step inside one of the fortress museums or keep wandering through a town of timber balconies, weathered walls and mountain air.
Cross into Montenegro and arrive in Budva on the Adriatic coast, where you’ll follow your Travel Director through narrow lanes enclosed by medieval walls, passing red-tiled roofs, small squares and glimpses of the shimmering Adriatic between the buildings. In your free time, choose a table for lunch, browse the old town or slip into the sea for a swim. Travel on to the Bay of Kotor, where steep green slopes descend towards deep blue water and small settlements trace the shoreline.
With your Travel Director, you’ll weave through Kotor’s UNESCO-listed old town, moving along narrow lanes that open into tucked-away courtyards framed by palaces, churches and shuttered buildings. Pause beneath the twin towers of St Tryphon Cathedral, one of the Romanesque churches that has stood here for centuries, and trace the fortified walls as they zigzag high above the town towards the fortress. In your free time, you can drift between church doors and shaded passageways, or head higher along the old defenses as Kotor’s rooftops and the blue sweep of the bay spread out below.
From Kotor, you’ll follow the Serpentine Road through a succession of hairpin bends, watching the water fall farther below as the road coils into the mountains. In Cetinje, Montenegro’s former royal capital, you can walk beneath linden trees past grand former embassy buildings. Your free time might take you inside King Nikola’s Palace, where furnished rooms, portraits and personal belongings offer a more intimate look at Montenegro’s royal family. Crossing into Croatia, continue towards Mlini on the Adriatic coast, where terracotta roofs and cypress-covered hills frame Župa Bay. You may choose to round off your trip over dinner with your fellow travelers at a local restaurant.
After breakfast in Mlini, it’s time to say goodbye to your Travel Director and fellow small group travelers. Ten days have carried you from Albania through Montenegro and into Croatia, with mountain roads, old towns and the Adriatic woven through the journey.
