Planning a family trip to Albania? TripNest turns it into its own app: 10 narrated story podcasts about Albania for the drive, games and a quiz for the kids, an audio phrasebook, and the day-by-day plan and map the whole family shares.
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Why a country is named after a bird
Albanians don't say Albania - they say Shqipëri, a name tangled up with eagles. We follow the double-headed eagle from ancient Illyrian tribes to the flag flying over Tirana today. By the end you'll spot that eagle on shop signs, football shirts and manhole covers.
Albania's most famous hero
In the 1400s a commander called Gjergj Kastrioti, known as Skanderbeg, led Albanian fighters from a mountain castle at Krujë and held out against a much larger empire for decades. We climb his castle, look at the helmet with goat horns on it, and ask why a person from six hundred years ago is still on the money. Bring your imagination for the steep bit.
Butrint, layer by layer
Butrint is a whole ancient city hiding under trees beside a lagoon, with a Greek theatre, Roman baths and a stone gate carved with a lion. Nobody lives there now, so tortoises and frogs have the place to themselves. We walk it slowly and work out who built what, and why they all left.
Berat and Gjirokastër up close
Two Albanian towns are so unusual that they are protected as World Heritage sites. One stacks white houses and their thousand windows up a cliff, the other has roofs of grey stone that look like fish scales from above. We find out how these houses were built to stay cool, and what it's like to live inside a castle's walls.
Little concrete domes everywhere
Walk a field in Albania and you may meet a mushroom-shaped lump of concrete with a slot in the front. For about forty-five years Albania was closed off from most of the world, and thousands of these bunkers went up. Today some are cafés, some are museums and some are just very good places for a photo.
Grey blocks turned rainbow
Tirana used to be a city of plain grey apartment blocks until someone decided to paint them orange, pink and lime green. We wander Skanderbeg Square, ride the cable car up Mount Dajti for the view, and browse the fruit stalls of the New Bazaar. Keep your eyes up - the best patterns are three floors high.
Words with no relatives
Albanian isn't like Italian, Greek or Serbian - it sits on its own branch of the family tree, and nobody speaks anything quite like it. We learn a handful of words, hear how the letter ë disappears into a soft uh, and listen to iso-polyphony, a style of group singing where one voice drones while others weave around it. Try joining in quietly in the car.
Eating your way through Albania
Flaky byrek for breakfast, fresh figs from a roadside stall, grilled fish by the sea and jars of mountain honey with a spoon stuck in. We find out why almost every meal starts with bread and ends with something sweet. Warning: this episode makes people hungry.
Ferries, peaks and stone villages
In northern Albania the mountains rise so steeply that in some places a boat is easier than a road, and the ferry along Lake Koman slides between cliffs for hours. Up in villages like Theth, stone towers stand among the meadows and the air smells of pine. We talk about besa, the promise of hospitality that says a guest must always be looked after.
The coast and the creatures on it
The Ionian coast has water so clear you can count pebbles under your feet, and islands just offshore at Ksamil. Along the flatter coast, lagoons fill up with flamingos and enormous Dalmatian pelicans. We go looking for tortoises in the scrub, lizards on warm walls, and the best place to watch the sun drop into the sea.
Shqipëri / Illyria / Hellas / Dardania
A white star / A black double-headed eagle / A golden lion / A green olive branch
Durrës / Shkodër / Tirana / Vlorë
The Albania podcast has 10 narrated story episodes for the car or the plane: Land of the Eagles, Skanderbeg and the Castle on the Rock, The City That Fell Asleep in the Forest, Towns Built of Stone, The Bunker Puzzle, Tirana, the Painted Capital, A Language All Its Own, Byrek, Honey and Ice Cream, Into the Albanian Alps and Blue Water, Big Birds.
"Faleminderit", said fah-leh-meen-DEH-reet. It's one of the phrases in the Albania audio phrasebook, recorded so the kids can hear it before they try it.
112 (Emergency (all services)). TripNest puts it in your trip's contacts page next to your own contacts.
Every trip starts free: the day-by-day plan, map and contacts. Premium adds the Albania podcasts, kids' games and the audio phrasebook for $24, once per trip - no subscription.
No. Your trip is one link that opens on everyone's phone, grandparents included, without an account. You can add it to your home screen so it works offline once you land.