Things to Do in Albania in March

This horse riding experience puts you on the trails along its banks and the ridgelines above it. Your mount follows paths through oak forest where the air is heavy with damp bark and wild thyme. Then it breaks into open meadow where Vjosa National Park develops below in a sweep of silver water and dark-green canopy.

The day tour from Shkodër covers the drive through Kelmendi gorge, where the asphalt narrows to a single lane pressed between cliff walls streaked with iron-orange mineral seepage. It arrives at the hamlet of Theth itself: a scattering of stone kulla towers, a lock-in church the size of a cottage, and the Blue Eye of Theth.

From there, it spirals outward through layers of the capital's compressed history. You pass the mosaic-fronted National Historical Museum. You duck into the cool, incense-heavy interior of the Et'hem Bey Mosque where the frescoed walls depict trees and waterfalls rather than human figures. Then you cross into Blloku, the former Communist Party elite quarter where Enver Hoxha's private villa now sits behind a café serving flat whites.

The tour takes in Oia, where whitewashed buildings cascade down volcanic cliffs toward cobalt water far below, and the quieter perch of Imerovigli. The only sound between ferry arrivals is the wind funneling through the caldera and the distant clang of a chapel bell.

The kitchen already smells of slow-cooked onion, dried red pepper flakes, and rendered lamb fat before you have tied on an apron. You learn to fold byrek with phyllo so thin it tears if you handle it without confidence. You stir a tave kosi until the yogurt-and-egg custard sets golden over braised lamb. You chop a shopska salad with tomatoes ripe enough to split under the knife and bleed pink juice across the board.

The Blue Eye comes first: a karst spring where water surfaces from an unmeasured depth in a circle of impossible color, cerulean at the rim shading to navy-black at the center. From there, the route climbs to Lëkurësi Castle, an Ottoman hilltop fortress above Saranda where the wind carries salt off the strait and the views stretch to Corfu's green ridgeline on a clear March day. Ksamil's three small islands sit in water so transparent the sandy bottom is visible from the shore. The circuit closes at Butrint, the UNESCO site where Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Venetian ruins layer atop each other in a forest of stone pines and eucalyptus.