Mostly taking it easy today and resting up for the next four day series of rides. Our hotel is more upscale that what we have been used to. It has three restaurants and two bars. One of the restaurants is on the roof with a decent view of the activity below. I gave them my laundry to do and it was returned in about an hour. This is probably the exception and we will be back to the rural hotels tomorrow.
I took a walk around Tirana this morning and main city is not as large as I had expected. I covered much of the area shown in the map that the hotel provided. I have included some random shots from my walk. There is a large plaza that I think is named after Mother Teresa. I have some pictures below but they really don’t do it justice. Along one side it is open to the street, buildings are on two other sides. One has a large mural on it and on the fourth side is a carousel, a large statue and a mosque. It is Sunday so a lot of the stores were closed but restaurants and a few of the stores were open and there were quite a lot of people walking around.
It seemed, as I was walking, that every third store or so was a mobile phone store. I don’t quite understand that. Either that must be a very lucrative business or people in Albania really go through a lot of phones.
Tomorrow we are riding again and headed to Shkodra. It will be our last full day in Albania. The ride is a little over 100 Km but it appears to be much more downhill than uphill so it should be relatively easy. The only problem is that there is a 70% chance of rain which won’t be any fun. In fact, rain is forecast for every day this next week. I hope conditions change.
