VLORE
04/19/2026 - 04/24/2026
We left Sarande by car and drove to our next destination. The drive was absolutely spectacular with incredible views of the ocean and mountains all at once. This drive is referred to as the Albania riviera and is seriously beautiful. We stopped at a couple beach bars/restaurants along the way, but didn’t stop to get many other pictures of the view because we thought we were going to get our great photos while hiking the next day – which didn’t happen ☹
Along the route we stopped in the small town of Himare to see the Porto Palermo Castle. As far as castles go, it isn’t very old but it was still kind of cool. The castle was commissioned by Ali Pasha of Tepelena around 1804–1819, and designed by French military engineers. It served as a military garrison and prison. The inside is a maze of vaulted rooms with a basement that functioned as a prison. Legend claims that Ali Pasha executed the French architects after they completed the building to prevent them from building another one like it – nice guy!
We arrived in Vlore and were a little underwhelmed. We were supposed to stay for 7 nights, but cut it short and left after 5. Vlore is a nice beach town with a pretty water view, but that is about it. There aren’t a lot of attractions, and there isn’t really an old town. But the view from our apartment was admittedly spectacular.
We mapped out a list of things we wanted to do and felt like we struck out at every turn! On our first day we were going to do a hike about an hour away that was supposed to offer spectacular views of the mountains and sea. The sky was clear and gorgeous in town and for the first 45 minutes of the drive to the Llogara National Park, but once we started up the mountain, we were socked in with clouds and had almost no visibility – so no hike! We salvaged the day by finding an awesome little farm to table restaurant/winery in the countryside.
Day 2 we had a cooking class scheduled. We woke up to no water, which remained out the ENTIRE day (and it went out again for several hours the next day). Apparently water shut downs with very little notice are common. We did what we could to get cleaned up and headed to our cooking class. The cooking class was yet another strike out! They had no plan for an alternative pescatarian menu which was requested/confirmed, so we would have essentially cooked an entire meal that I couldn’t eat. So we cancelled.
Strike three was our adventure north of town. The first stop was decent. It was a small 13th century Byzantine-era monastery situated on an island surrounded by a lagoon accessible by a long curved wooden bridge.
The second stop was awful – we went to a lighthouse. We knew up front that the lighthouse itself wasn’t much, but there were supposed to be some cool bunkers below it with a small museum. Since there wasn’t much else to do, we put it on our itinerary. The drive really required a 4 wheel drive vehicle, but we pressed on (and at one point were concerned that we might have caused damage to the bottom of car!). When we finally made it to the top, there was really nothing worth seeing. The light house was ugly and was pretty far back behind a barbed wire military fence. The “museum” was a tiny bunker/room with a few posters on the walls. We couldn’t actually read them as it was locked and we could just see in from the gate at the entrance. It didn’t look like much even if we could have gone inside.
Our final stop (now a full hour north of town) was Apollonia Archeological Park. We arrived at 3:00 and it was closed - the website said they were open until 5:00! Ugh!
There were a couple marginally interesting sites in town - The Muradie Mosque which is a 16th-century Ottoman landmark built between 1537 and 1542 during Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent’s reign.
We also visited the National Museum of Independence which was pretty interesting. It is housed in the historic building where the country's first government operated in 1912 and marks the spot where Ismail Qemali raised the Albanian flag, declaring independence from the Ottoman Empire on November 28, 1912.
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