This is going to be the shortest recap from a single location we’ve been to so far, and it will probably remain the shortest recap throughout our journey. I hope so, at least. Shëngjin wasn’t ours, quite frankly and it already started the wrong way. We knew Shëngjin would be crowded, hence we booked an apartment outside of the main beaches, which are known to be crowded. The kids were desperate to get to the seaside and we were also interested, and as it was a relatively short drive from Tirana, we said: Let’s do it.

Shëngjin is a coastal town in northwestern Albania with just 6.900 inhabitants and probably 10 times as many tourists. As all these tourists need beds, the beachfront is packed with large hotels and apartment buildings. You can imagine the appeal, same as it would be in the main tourist areas in Spain or Portugal.

Around 20 minutes prior to our arrival in Shëngjin, which was yesterday, August 26th, we texted the apartment host and received the answer that we were asked to cancel the apartment a few days ago. None of us had received an email, hence we were a little surprised to say the least. We agreed to meet anyway and were promised that a solution would be found. When we arrived at the apartment, we realised the whole building was more of a construction site. The promised pool had no water, and most of the apartments didn’t appear to be finished either. Our host wasn’t to be found. We tried calling and eventually reached somebody, who promised us to be there in 20 minutes. We were already a bit fed up and half an hour later we decided to leave and find a different solution.

We know our previous host Viktor from Kosovo had a network in Shëngjin, so we texted him and explained our situation. Viktor told us a location to go to and talk to a friend of his. So we did, and about an hour later, we had a very nice apartment in a fairly new building directly at the beach. Viktor to the rescue… again! Whilst the room was laid out for a couple, the hosts were extremely friendly and helpful and even organized a spare bed for us to be put into the room, so the 4 of us would be able to get some sleep. Honestly, whilst it is never nice to be stranded, it was somehow heartwarming to see that a network can keep your head above water, even in unfavourable circumstances.  

We spent some time at the pool and on the packed beach before we cooked ourselves some dinner in the apartment. We were very generously offered a much larger apartment for the following days for a fair price, but since the fair price was still consuming most of our daily budget and the whole environment wasn't exactly ours, we decided to leave Shëngjin the next day. We spent the evening planning our next move and decided to drive to Montenegro. We heard a lot of good stuff about Montenegro and Kotor, in particular, so we looked for an apartment in the Kotor/ Tevat area.

I have a very limited selection of pictures I can post from our stay in Shëngjin… One picture, to be precise, from an unfinished apartment block with an empty pool, which we used to alert booking.com, but that might be a decent summary from yesterday.

Today, on the 27th of August, we hit the road again and went on a 4 hour drive to country #11, Montenegro. Since Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro was exactly en route, we decided to stop there for a break and were pleasantly surprised. The city doesn’t have that much to offer, but was a great little stop for a longer drive. The kids took a quick splash in the Moraca River and generally, the city came across very clean, authentic and not touristy at all, which felt like a relief after the previous day. Podgorica, or Titograd as it was called between 1945 and 1992, has a fairly rich history. It was targeted by NATO airstrikes in 1999 during the Kosovo War, as it was part of Serbia & Montenegro and only became an independent country in 2006. We enjoyed a 90 minute walk through the city and continued our journey to the Kotor/ Tivat area.

It is now close to midnight, I am sitting on our terrasse in the apartment close to Tivat, a 1 minute footwalk away from salty water. It’s beautiful and confirmed to us that we made the right decision to leave Shëngjin behind. More on Tivat and Kotor and Monengro in our next update! Good night!