Tirana Day trips

Tirana sits in the middle of the country, which makes it the best base in Albania for day trips. Kruja is the short one: a hill town half an hour north with Skanderbeg's castle and a restored Ottoman bazaar, easily done in an afternoon. Berat, the UNESCO-listed town of stacked white Ottoman houses, is about two hours south and is the classic full day.

Durres, thirty-five kilometres west, gives you a Roman amphitheatre and the coast. The Dajti cable car needs only a morning. Theth and the far north are genuinely too far to do properly in a day.