Albania

Well the 1 1/2 hour bus trip from Ulcinj to Skhodra ended up taking about 3 hours. We are discovering that border crossings can be quite time consuming, especially when you are on a bus.
You certainly know that you have entered a different country when you hit Albania. Our first impressions of Skhodra were, grey weathered looking buildings and an air of poverty / neglect everywhere.  Our hotel was great in the entrance and reception, but as you went up a couple of floors things started to deteriorate. Only stayed 1 night, used it as a stopover before our trip to Tirana - capital of Albania.
The trip to Tirana was quite an experience. We ended up in one of the local transport alternatives, a 'furgon' or minibus.  Not sure whether they have to pass a wof or not, if they do they must get it from a backstreet somewhere.  That aside though, they got us there safely which is saying a lot when you see the state of the roads. A roading engineer's worst nightmare! 
We read in one of the tourist blurbs that "you could count Tirana's attractions on one finger". That is a little harsh, but not a lot of 'must sees'. This is all sounding a bit negative, but actually we enjoyed wandering around the city, getting lost, finding ourselves in a street market, then out and around in a big circle back to our hotel. Amongst all that, and after several lots of directions to various places, we managed to find an ear specialist to 'unblock' Dave's ears. Now I don't have to repeat everything twice.
Tirana's main claim to fame is the amazing paintwork on a lot of the apartment blocks. The mayor who was elected in 2000, who was an art major from Paris, decided he needed to do something about the 'greyness' of the post-Soviet era so he made it a project to liven up the buildings.  See some of our photos....
The National Museum was really interesting. It went from the Stone Age, to the end of the 2nd WW. We noticed that nothing was mentioned, or displayed, about the communist era. Also saw a statue of Mother Teresa, not sure of her relevance to Tirana, as she was Macedonian...
Had some lovely authentic Albanian meals here too. Lambs liver seems to be popular here,  but they do it well.