Everything started with a photo posted on our Facebook group. The prime minister of our lovely Albania posted about the all new constructed road in one of the northernmost places of the country, just a few kilometers far from the Montenegrin border. We are a group of car enthusiasts, we love road trips, so, we found an excuses to spend some fuel on a sunny sunday. We invited a few other friends, woke up early in the morning, and started our trip.
For you that don't know a lot about my country, Albania, is a small country in the west of Balkan, eastern Europe. It is so small compared to most of European countries.
We started our trip from the capital of Albania, Tirana, and our destination was about 150km from point A.
We were overly excited about this trip. Something clearly showed in the faces of everyone of us, and lost about 20-30 minutes driving through crowded Shkodra, the last city before we arrive our destination.
As the road opened up, we drove through some amazing and new winding roads through the villages of Grilë, Kçar i poshtëm, Koplik, Pjeroshan, Hot, Rrapshë, to finally arrive to our "El Dorado", the place called "Leqet e Hotit" (Google Maps it at 42.415520, 19.503922. Street View too :D).
It was so quite there, a little bit crowded, but being in the middle of those mountains was an amazing experience.
But we couldn't get enough of it so we drove down the road, almost 14km, to the place called Tamarë. The center of this village was restored recently so it felt we were somewhere in the Swiss mountains, so far from Albania. Sometimes going that far from civilization, closer to nature, makes you think a lot. Do we really deserve these kind of politicians that govern this country? Do we really deserve wars, bombs, and other conflicts that media shows us every day?
God, nature, universe, whoever you believe in has given us a beautiful planet to live in and we create all those technological advances but we can't create a good system, for everyone to live.
...Well, I won't annoy you more, enough with that...
After all that, we were so hungry that we couldn't wait to have lunch. Unfortunately we were a lot of people so the owner of the restaurant there (it was only one I believe) told us that in order to have something to eat, we had to wait about 2 hours...
But this didn't broke up the smile on our faces! We drove back to Shkodra, to the city I visited for the first time and loved it a lot. We found a good restaurant in the place called "Pedonale" that is basically the "Avenue des Champs-Élysées" of the city.
After that, it was time to bring our heads back to our city.
With that "never-ending" smile in our face, we drove back to Tirana, know that we've really seen, on of the hidden treasures of Europe!
Well, you have to bring your food with you sometimes...
No day can start without caffe!
Camera car
Those curves...
Isn't this road so perfect?
Driving up the mountain
A cow
And sheeps too
Our destination, the place called "Leqet e Hotit"
Lot of mountains!
Somewhere there, there is Montenegro
This guy here is Osho
Some of the guys took a spin down the road
Road to Tamarë
Mountains, mountains everywhere
This is Tamarë
Chilling
Photshoot time!
On our way to our city, we stopped by the place called "Gjadër", an abandoned airfield where a few years ago we used to organised drag races but due to a few government problems, the runaway is blocked with concrete blocks.
