Living in Albania: the honest version

In the 2026 map I put the Albanian Riviera at the top of the list. Tier A, the window is closing, go now. Europe's last cheap capital, a studio under five hundred euro, the Europe of fifteen years ago before anyone found it. I meant it.

Then I went. A week in Vlore, the plan to tell it from the inside like the other stops. This entry is different from the others, because it did not end the way I thought it would. I am writing it anyway. In fact I am writing it precisely for that reason: the series is worthless if I only report the places that work.

The short version is this. The food is excellent, and that is where it ends. Everything else, the way I lived it, is a system built to bleed you slowly, and on the last day it cost me a laptop.

On paper, Vlore is everything I promised

Let me start with what was true, because it was. The apartment in the center, near the seafront and the big roundabout, cost me thirty-eight euro a night. One bedroom, bathroom, balcony, modern and clean. At that price, in high season, it is a good deal. Rent it monthly and haggle a little, the people are friendly and happy to talk, and you are around seven or eight hundred a month. But June flips it into high season and they want to make money, so the real bargain price only shows up from October on, at the tail of the season.

Coffee is one euro. A croissant one fifty, breakfast done for three. Lunch and dinner ten, fifteen euro. A beer two or three, a cocktail five or six. And the food, genuinely, is the best thing about the country: seafood linguine for eight euro, grilled fish for ten, and the fish is good and fresh everywhere. There is an Italian place, Liam, where I ate really well.

The day worked. Up around nine, breakfast, work. The wifi in the apartment was good, and in the city internet was never a problem. The power did not cut once, the line did not drop once, the whole week. At four I would break for an hour and go to the sea, because on the coast the midday sun is brutal and in direct light you last about an hour before you burn. I skipped the seven-euro sunbed beaches and rented an electric scooter for ten euro a day, riding a little south of town where the coast turns to rock and cold mountain-river water mixes into the sea. Coves of bare stone with no one around, clear water, silence. That part really was a small paradise.

If the story ended there, I would have confirmed the map. It does not end there.

Then there is the real bill

The first thing that eats you is cash. Almost no one takes card. It is always "cash only," maybe a tax dodge, but the result is the same: you go to the ATM. And the ATM, to let you withdraw, charges you nine euro. Nine euro. You pay a five-euro taxi and you spend more than that just to get the money out. Withdraw a hundred, two hundred, spend it, go back, another nine euro. Every time. You came to relax on a beach and you end up commuting to a machine that taxes you at every turn.

Then the taxis. A five-minute ride runs you ten, fifteen, twenty euro, and the driver looks at you like he is doing you a favor, like you should give him more. The same ride in Thailand or Indonesia costs one or two euro. Here fifteen, and they tell you it is cheap.

And quality is a lottery where the label means nothing. One night, in Borsh, I slept in a place called "Luxury Hotel." Thirty-five euro, and a room I did not even want to shower in. Luxury on the door, a dump inside. You have to check everything in person, always, because you cannot trust how things present themselves.

The last day

I took the bus back from Vlore to Tirana. Two hours, two and a half. This time there was air conditioning, a calm ride, my bag down in the hold.

At the arrival, in the hold, my bag was gone. In its place an identical one, full of vegetables and countryside clothes. Someone had taken mine, by mistake or not, and my laptop was in it. All of it, gone. Everyone told me the same line, Albanians are good people, it will come back. Nothing came back. The police could do nothing.

They told me not to take my flight, to wait a day, maybe it would turn up. I did not believe it for a second, and I did not want to spend another day there. I went straight to the airport and waited ten hours in a lounge, not moving, not wanting to see anyone else or get worked over by the system one more time, until the plane for Italy left.

Who I would recommend it to

No one. It is the first time I have written that about a place, and I am writing it on purpose.

There are places that cost the same or less and treat you better. Spain, Tenerife, Malta, the islands. The food is good in Albania, and for me it is the only reason to go: if you go, go to eat, but be extremely careful where you sleep and what you do, because you will spend a lot of time feeling eaten by the system. Even if Instagram and the reviews make it look wonderful, do not. You will not be happy. And whatever else you do, hand-carry your laptop. Never the hold.

I was wrong on the map. The Albanian Riviera has second-stage beaches, water that stays with you, and the stretch between Himare and Ksamil, where they are building right now, probably will blow up. But a second-stage place is not only beaches and prices. It is also how it treats you while you are in it. And that part, right now, is not ready.

I am not going back.

The stops that did work are in the second-stage paradises map and on the travels page.