My first day in Tirana

I wasn't expecting much from Tirana before going, if I'm honest. On paper it was just the gateway into the trip, the mandatory stop before reaching the real coast — the place to land and move on. It turned out to be one of the most pleasant surprises of the seven days, and one of the ones I least expected.

We arrived mid-morning and, after dropping our bags at the hotel, walked straight to Skanderbeg Square with no plan beyond "let's see what's there." It's a huge space, almost out of proportion for the city's actual size, with the statue of the Albanian national hero keeping watch from his horse and a curious mix of Ottoman, Italian and Soviet architecture in the surrounding buildings that leaves you not quite sure what decade you're in.

In the afternoon we headed to Blloku, the area once off-limits to the public during the communist dictatorship and today the capital's liveliest neighborhood for bars and restaurants. We sat down on a terrace with no criteria beyond "this one looks good," and that's where we really started to understand the city: young people, terraces packed late into the day, a vibe that clashed completely with the image of Albania we'd brought from outside.

The contrast between what that neighborhood was thirty years ago and what it is today sums up, better than any explanation anyone could give me, how much the country has changed.

We had dinner at Oda, a traditional Albanian restaurant with wooden beams and a rustic feel — our first real contact with the country's food, and one of the best dishes of the whole trip, something I didn't expect at all on day one. We left already wanting more, which says a lot about how the trip actually started.

A quiet first day on paper, but enough to know that Tirana deserved a lot more than the simple "gateway" label I'd put on it myself before arriving.