A spring nobody has found the bottom of. And a coast still cheap enough to be a secret.
What the Sazan and Karaburun speedboat really costs once fuel and the park fee are in. Whether the Blue Eye is worth it from Tirana or only from Saranda. Which Komani ferry sailing gets you back the same night. Reviews of every tour you can book in Albania.
- 01The half day from TiranaBovilla Lake & Gamti Mountain Hiking Day TripA reservoir the colour of antifreeze, forty minutes out of the capital, with a ridge walk above it. The cheapest good day in the country.
02The Vlore boat daySazan Island, Haxhi Ali Cave, and Karaburun Boat TourSazan was a closed military island until a decade ago. The same run takes in Haxhi Ali Cave and the Karaburun beaches you cannot reach on foot.
03The long southern daySaranda, Ksamil, Blue Eye Day TripSaranda, the Blue Eye and the Ksamil islets in one run. It is a lot of minibus, and people still rate it the best day of the trip.
04The northern crossingKomani Lake and Shala River Day TripThe Komani ferry through a drowned canyon, then a boat up the Shala. Sailings are fixed and the boat leaves without you.
Three towns run Albania, and the rest is a drive from one of them.
Tirana for the mountains behind it and the flights in. Vlore for the peninsula and the cave. Saranda for the spring, the islets and Butrint. Durres, Shkoder and Berat pick up whatever those three do not reach.
The days out more people book than anything else in Albania.
Every Albanian tour we have reviewed →One reservoir hike carries more travellers than the entire coast. Here is the order the country actually books in, and what earns each slot.
1
Bovilla Lake & Gamti Mountain Hiking Day Trip
Leave Tirana by air-conditioned van for Bovilla Canyon and Lake Bovilla, then hike about 2 km up Gamti Mountain to a panoramic viewpoint. Guides such as Altin, Artol, Ilmi, and Beni add Albanian history and local stories, while a mountain café offers time for coffee or lunch.
From · $12
Read our review →
2
Bovilla Lake and Gamti Mountain Tour
from $29
3
Bovilla Lake & Gamti Mountain Hiking Tour
from $12
4
Kruja Castle, Old Bazaar & Sari Salltik View
from $23
5
Sazan Island, Haxhi Ali Cave, and Karaburun Boat Tour
from $35
6
Bovilla Lake & Gamti Mountain Viewpoint Hike
from $12
7
Saranda, Ksamil, Blue Eye Day Trip
from $57
8
Komani Lake and Shala River Day Trip
from $60
Saranda is a base for three things, and the spring is the reason people come.
Everything around Saranda →
Syri i Kalter is twenty minutes inland, Ksamil is twenty minutes south, and Butrint is at the end of the same road. Most days out here chain two or three of them, which is why the timing matters more than the price.
Syri i Kalter, before the coaches
Divers have been down fifty metres and never found the bottom. The water sits at about ten degrees all year, the platform above it takes maybe thirty people, and by eleven there are four minibuses in the car park.
Lekursi Castle at sunset
An Ottoman fort on the hill behind the town, looking down the strait at Corfu. Most trips park you there for the sunset with a drink and leave the grilled dinner optional.
The Ksamil islets
Three small islands close enough to swim to, over sand rather than the shingle most of this coast runs on. In August the beach clubs take the whole strip; in June you can still find a rock to yourself.
The best of the Albanian coast has no road to it.
Karaburun is a peninsula with no through road and Sazan was a sealed military island until 2015. Everything worth seeing on that stretch, including Haxhi Ali Cave and the Grama Bay inscriptions, arrives by hull out of Vlore harbour.
- 1Sazan Island, Haxhi Ali Cave, and Karaburun Boat Tourfrom $35
- 2Haxhi Ali Cave, Karaburun Speedboat Tour & Snorkeling
- 3Blue Cave and Grama Bay Adventuresfrom $90
Tirana is forty minutes from a reservoir and an hour from a castle.
Almost nobody flies in for the city itself, and almost everybody ends up basing there anyway. Bovilla and the Gamti ridge, Kruja bazaar under Skanderbeg’s castle, the Dajti cable car up the escarpment. All of it is a morning pickup and back before dinner.
Speedboat to Sazan, the slow cave run, or the whole peninsula. Pick your hull.
Nearly every good thing on this coastline is on the far side of a cliff. Three kinds of boat day, what it costs to board each, and which harbour it leaves from.
What a day out in Albania actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. The country is still cheap enough that the deciding factor is usually the drive, not the money.
Reservoir hikes, city walks, the cable car, castle runs and most of the half-day boats.
The long southern chains, the Komani crossing, Theth, and the full-day speedboats with lunch.
Private drivers, chartered boats and the multi-day runs into the northern mountains.
Three things Albania has that the rest of the Adriatic does not.
Beaches and old towns run the length of this sea. A ferry through a drowned canyon, a valley you reach over a mountain pass, and a stone city built like a staircase do not.
The Komani Ferry
A hydro dam flooded the Drin gorge in the 1970s and left a lake so narrow it reads as a river between thousand-foot walls. The ferry is a working boat: it carries cars, villagers and post as well as travellers, it sails to a timetable rather than to demand, and most day trips pair it with a smaller boat up the Shala at the far end.
- 1Komani Lake and Shala River Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,520 reviews
- 2Tirana/Durres/Shkodra: Shala River and Koman Lake Boat Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 409 reviews
- 3Koman: Shala River Boat Tour & Komani Lake★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 309 reviews
Theth and the Accursed Mountains
Theth sits in a bowl of limestone reached over a pass that only stopped being a dirt track a few years ago. The village has a lock-in tower where families waited out blood feuds, its own blue spring in the river, and a waterfall an hour’s walk up the valley. Snow closes the whole thing for a good part of the year.
- 1From Tirana/Durres/Shkoder: Day Tour to Theth and Blue Eye★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 470 reviews
- 2Albanian Alps and Theth Village Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 339 reviews
- 3From Tirana/Durres/Shkoder: Theth & Blue Eye Tour (Smll Grp)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 249 reviews
The Osum Canyons
The Osum has cut a slot twenty-odd kilometres long and up to eighty metres deep into the limestone above Berat. Rafting it depends entirely on the melt: high and fast in spring, and by high summer a walk through shallows. Guides read the level that week, not the calendar.
- 1Çorovoda: Osumi Canyon Rafting/River Tubing Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 438 reviews
- 2Osum Canyon and Bogove Waterfall Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 282 reviews
- 3Berat Tour Osumi Canyons Exploration Lunch Transfer★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 212 reviews
Four Albanian bookings that run on somebody else’s clock.
Most of this country can be arranged the night before over a raki. These four are governed by ferry timetables, snowmelt, a national-park boundary and the wind on an exposed crossing.
- 01Komani Lake and Shala River Day TripThe ferry sails to a published timetable, not to demand, and it carries vehicles as well as people. Miss the sailing and the alternative is a very long drive round.
- 02Sazan Island, Haxhi Ali Cave, and Karaburun Boat TourSazan is a controlled zone with capped visitor numbers, and the crossing is open water. Operators cancel on wind, so the earlier slots are the ones that actually run.
- 03Çorovoda: Osumi Canyon Rafting/River Tubing TourThe canyon is rafted on snowmelt, roughly spring into early summer. By August the river is too low and the trip becomes a walk.
- 04From Tirana/Durres/Shkoder: Day Tour to Theth and Blue EyeThe pass into Theth is closed by snow for months, and the valley’s guesthouse beds are counted in dozens rather than hundreds.
The Ionian boats stop, and Albania carries on inland.
Boat operators out of Vlore and Saranda work a season, and even inside it an afternoon northerly can call off the Karaburun crossing at an hour’s notice. The country inland does not close: thermal water in the Langarica gorge, Kallmet and Shesh poured at the cellar, a bazaar under a castle, and somebody’s kitchen in Tirana.
Albania’s best swimming is nowhere near the sea.
A spring too cold to stay in, a reservoir the colour of a swimming pool, a canyon river fed by snow and a lake that used to be a gorge. The inland water is what people come back talking about.
By place — coast, capital and mountains
By kind of day — water, ridge, kitchen or road
Shkoder to Ksamil: the run most first visits end up doing.
ThethThe newest Albanian tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Private Day Tour of Saranda Gjirokaster,Butrint from Tirana
Read our review →
Old Bazaar-Cfake-Dunavat-Ali Pasha Bridge Walking Tour
Read our review →
Mavrovi Anovi: Guided Full-Day Hike to Golem Korab Peak
Read our review →
Lundër: Lundra Winery Guided Tour with Wine Tasting
Read our review →
Ksamil Pigeon Cave Snorkeling free Drinks Speedboat In Group
Read our review →