My Albania trip: 7 days in Tirana, Sarande and Ksamil

Seven days. Three very different stops: a capital that kept surprising us every single day, a coastal city full of history with views of Corfu, and islands with water I still find hard to believe was inside Europe.

We started in Tirana, with a full day to adjust to a capital that changes face every few years — everyone we talked to there had a different opinion about what the city was like "just five years ago." From there, we drove south past Llogara National Park, and that was the trip's first real "wow": the Ionian Sea suddenly appearing after the last mountain curve, in a color we didn't expect so soon.

Two nights in Sarande, with Corfu always in view from the promenade — we had dinner almost every night looking that way, wondering how much it would cost to take a boat across one day. And then the shift up a gear: three nights in Ksamil, hopping between beaches, sea caves and tiny islands you reach in minutes.

Every time we thought we'd already seen the best stretch of turquoise water of the trip, another cove would show up and top it. It genuinely happened four or five times.

It wasn't a trip without hiccups — the rental car gave us a real scare (the insurance, of course), the coastal road's curves take more time than you'd calculate, and the August heat forced us to shuffle the order of a day or two on the fly. But it's exactly that feeling of being in a destination that isn't overrun yet that made the trip feel so special, almost like a secret we weren't sure whether to tell.

This series of posts is my way of telling it all slowly, day by day and mistake by mistake. If you're thinking of doing this same route, I hope it saves you some grief.