Berat, Albania

Merry Christmas! I think only once over the past eight years (since we started traveling over Christmas) have we actually had a fireplace (and thus a chimney) in our room. Our room in Berat was warm but didn’t have a fireplace, so no visit from Santa for us, lol.

Breakfast was in the same dining room that we had dinner. The room catches the morning sun and has great 270* views. The food was good, the coffee so-so.

After breakfast we headed up to Kalaja, the walled fortress on the hill, about 200m above Berat. It’s a steep climb up, with the occasional car going by. It took us about ten minutes to get to the main gate of the castle.

Normally there’s a fee to enter but not today, not sure if that’s because it’s off-season, or because it’s Christmas.

There were a couple other groups of people visiting too. We all started in a clump but then eventually spread out on our own ways. It’s an actual village inside, where people live, so really it’s just like walking about town. The highlight was Onufri Museum, set inside an 18th century church with a beautiful iconostasis, and 16th century religious paintings. We’ve recently seen similar artistry in Cyprus and Belarus; Onufri was the best we’ve seen.

Walked back down into town and had lunch at the same place as yesterday (we both had gyros). Called into a woodworking shop we had seen yesterday, to buy a wood carving we really liked, but he was closed. Walked down the pedestrian-only Boulevard Republika. One side is filled with restaurant patios, although somewhat sparsely used at this time of year (it was only 15C today). Heather picked an excellent coffee place where we had coffee and snacks.

We tried to find our way up to St Michael Church, this time using Google Maps, and we found it! It was closed (which we knew, it’s only open from 11am-noon) but it was more about the great views (it’s about 100m up).

On the way back down we tried to find our way out closer to the hotel. Somewhere along the way, I must have rubbed up against a lamp, and an enterprising lady popped out of her doorway like a genie. She started into her sales pitch for jams, preserved goods and raki. It was like watching an infomercial in a different language but still getting the pitch. Actually, it was like being in said infomercial. We had a sip of raki from a plastic water bottle cap (makes me strong), a sip of something else which had some benefit that I forget, anyways, it all made sense in the blur and I think we were lucky to escape with just buying a jar of fig jam, before the lady disappeared back into her doorway.

The spell wore off as we walked home. We threw out the fig jam in case it was a bad luck potion (we actually did throw it out, but just because we don’t trust the canning abilities of random people).

We had our Christmas dinner in the hotel restaurant. Tried a couple other mains, both were excellent.

After we walked down the pedestrian street and checked out the town’s Instagram-ready decorations. There were also classic rides like a merry-go-round. It was very festive.