By Bus

Albania is not as difficult as you might expect to travel around.  My wife and I recently spent 8 days exploring the country with our 18th month old daughter while she was 28 weeks pregnant with our second child!  There is a relatively good public bus system which can take you pretty much anywhere you want to go in the country.  We entered the country on foot after getting dropped at the border by a taxi at Han i Hotit which is between Podgorica ( Montenegro ) and Shkodra ( Albania ).  The border guards were very helpful and called a local taxi for us to continue down to Shkodra.  While the taxi's might not be as cheap as you may expect, sometimes it's the only way to get somewhere as we found out. 

Once we had made it to a town it was relatively easy.  There is usually an area where all the busses and furgon's (large mini van's) stop.  Busses tend to stick to a schedule and generally travel between main towns around the country while furgons tend to depart when they are almost full and will go to some of the smaller destinations.  The busses tend to be cheaper but do usually take a little longer to reach your destination however both busses and furgons will stop or pick you up from the side of the road anywhere along their route if you flag them down.  You usually pay a conductor once you have boarded the bus, simply let them know where you are going and they will tell you the price.  Before we boarded the bus we usually confirmed it's destination just to make sure.  On a furgon you tend to pay the driver or conductor when you get off.

In Tirana it's not quite as easy as there are a number of areas where the busses and furgons stop.  They are listed in the lonely planet (Eastern Europe 2005 Ed.) and their map is fairly good however we did find that there was a major bus departure point behind a large petrol station (I think it was a BP?) at least 1 kilometre NE along Ruga Durresit  once you get past the ring road surrounding Tirana on the way towards the Airport and Durres.  We caught a bus to Berat from here, it would have been possible to get on this at any point along its route however unless you know where it goes and what time its due we found it was best to try to get on the bus at a major stop.

I hope my description doesn't sound too daunting.  We loved our time in Albania and would highly recommend it as a destination before it becomes too westernised.  If you do make it there we would highly recommend the following lesser visited places on your itinerary Shkodra, Kruje, Berat, Himara.