Albania, coast to canyon.
Which boat actually reaches Grama Bay. What the Blue Eye costs before lunch. Whether Theth is a day trip or a three-day walk. Every tour in Albania, reviewed.
Berat, Theth and all the water in between.
Ottoman stone towns stacked up a hillside, a spring nobody has found the bottom of, alpine villages that only got a paved road this century, and a limestone coast with more caves than beaches. These are the days an Albania trip gets built around.
Albania keeps its best beaches behind a headland.
The road stops at Radhima and the coast carries on for another forty kilometres without it. Grama Bay, Haxhi Ali Cave, the Sazan tunnels and the Karaburun cliffs are reachable only by boat, and the boat leaves from Vlore harbour in the morning.
Albania is the cheapest country in Europe to fill a week in.
Every tour on the site, sorted by what it actually costs. A guided day in Berat runs about the price of a sandwich at home.
Guided walks in Tirana and Berat, the Bovilla hike, castle mornings in Kruja, most of the speedboat runs out of Vlore.
Full days with transport and lunch: Gjirokastra and the Blue Eye, Butrint and Ksamil, Osumi rafting, cooking classes.
Multi-day circuits through the Alps, private cars with a driver for the southern loop, and the small-group Riviera trips.
Berat and Gjirokastra are UNESCO twins that look nothing alike.
Berat stacks whitewashed Ottoman houses up both banks of the Osum until the hillside is more window than wall. Gjirokastra is grey slate and fortress, built for defence rather than light. Both keep a castle you can still walk into, and both sit on the road south.
The tours more travellers take than anything else in Albania.
Every review →What Albania is actually sold on: a mountain hike above a reservoir, a UNESCO town for the price of lunch, and a bazaar under a castle.
1
Hike Gamti Mountain with Bovilla lake view & canyon- From Tirana
Hike Gamti Mountain above Bovilla Lake, enjoy canyon scenery, Albanian stories, air-conditioned transport, and excellent value from Tirana.
From · $12
Read our review →2
Day Trip to Saranda and Butrint National Park from Corfu
from $68
3
Berat city UNESCO tour, the Castle & Belshi lake- From Tirana
from $12
4
Walking Tour of Tirana
from $18
5
Kruja castle, the old Bazaar & Sarisalltik- Departure from Tirana
from $24
6
Albanian Night Show: Traditional Music, Dance & Dinner in Tirana
from $53
7
Hiking Tour to Bovilla Lake & Gamti Mountain
from $12
8
Shala river & Komani lake -Day trip departure from Tirana/Shkodra
from $62
Three Albanian days its neighbours cannot sell you.
Balkan castles and Adriatic beaches are everywhere. A spring that swallows a dye test, a valley that spent fifty years unreachable, and a Greek city left standing in a marsh belong to Albania alone.
The Blue Eye
Divers have gone down more than fifty metres into the Syri i Kaltër and never found the floor; the water pushes up hard enough to make the descent a fight. It runs at about ten degrees all year, which is why almost nobody who swears they will swim actually does. It sits on the Saranda–Gjirokastra road, so it lands on a lot of day trips as a stop rather than a destination.
- 1The Stone City & Blue Eye- The monument of Nature.★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 180 reviews
- 2Butrint, Ksamil, Blue Eye, Lekuresi Castle. All-in-one daytrip.★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 125 reviews
- 3Saranda, Ksamil, and Blue Eye Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 113 reviews
Theth and Valbona
Two villages on opposite sides of the Accursed Mountains, joined by a footpath over the Valbona pass and by a ferry that runs the length of Koman reservoir through a flooded gorge. The road into Theth was only paved in 2022. The pass is walkable roughly June to October; outside that window the crossing is snow and the trip becomes a different one.
- 1Shala river & Komani lake -Day trip departure from Tirana/Shkodra★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 309 reviews
- 2Albanian Alps and Theth Village Day Tour from Tirana★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 116 reviews
- 3Hiking Tour of Valbona, Theth & Blue Eye in 3 Days from Tirana★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 73 reviews
Butrint
Greek theatre, Roman forum, Byzantine baptistery and a Venetian tower, stacked on one small peninsula that silted up and was abandoned rather than rebuilt over. That is why the layers survived. It is twenty minutes below Saranda, which is why it almost always shares a day with Ksamil.
- 1Day Trip to Saranda and Butrint National Park from Corfu★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 847 reviews
- 2Butrint, Ksamil, Blue Eye, Lekuresi Castle. All-in-one daytrip.★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 125 reviews
- 3Butrint, Blue Eye, Ksamil and Lekuresi Castle Tour From Saranda★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 102 reviews
North to south, Shkoder down to Butrint.
Kruja
KsamilAlmost every Albanian day trip starts outside a Tirana hotel.
The country is small enough that Berat, Kruja, Bovilla, Shkoder and even Theth are all same-day returns from the capital, and operators price the pickup in. That is worth knowing before you book four separate bases. Tirana itself is worth one slow morning: the Blloku streets, Skanderbeg Square, the bunker museums and the cable car up Dajti.
- 1Hike Gamti Mountain with Bovilla lake view & canyon- From Tiranafrom $12
- 2Berat city UNESCO tour, the Castle & Belshi lake- From Tiranafrom $12
- 3Walking Tour of Tiranafrom $18
Book these before you land in Albania.
Most of the country can be arranged from a Tirana guesthouse the night before. These cannot: they run on a ferry timetable, a snow line, or a boat that only goes out when the Ionian is flat.
- 01Shala river & Komani lake -Day trip departure from Tirana/ShkodraThe Koman ferry runs once a day each way and carries a fixed number of foot passengers. Miss it and the next option is a nine-hour road detour.
- 02Albanian Alps and Theth Village Day Tour from TiranaThe Valbona pass is a summer crossing. Outside roughly June to October the snow closes it and the trip becomes a road day instead of a walk.
- 03Snorkeling 360 Experience in Sazan Island & KaraburunSazan is still a military island with a capped daily visitor list, and the whole run is cancelled outright on a windy morning.
- 04Berat Rafting, Kayaking & River Tubing – Osumi CanyonsThe Osumi canyon is rafted on snowmelt. The water is high enough roughly March to June and the season simply ends.
Albania in the rain is a table, a still and a castle.
Spring and autumn bring genuine downpours to the coast, and a windy morning cancels every boat out of Vlore and Saranda regardless of the sky. The inland answers hold up: a cooking class over byrek and tavë kosi, a winery in the Roshnik hills pouring Kallmet, raki tasted where it is distilled, and a castle that has kept the weather out for six hundred years.
Four countries are a day return from Tirana.
All cross-border day trips →These leave Albania and come back the same evening. Ohrid, Prizren, Kotor and Corfu are North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Greece — neighbours, not Albanian towns, and worth a day on their own terms.
Day Trip to Saranda and Butrint National Park from Corfu
Read our review →Semi-Private Tour of North Macedonia: Ohrid & Struga from Tirana
Read our review →
North Macedonia: Ohrid & Saint Naum Day Tour from Tirana
Read our review →By where you are staying
Tirana386 tours
Saranda80 tours
Berat72 tours
Vlore44 tours
Gjirokastra40 tours
Shkoder24 tours
Durres21 tours
Permet14 tours- Every review →
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Vlore| Full Day Guided Tour to Grama Bay and Marine Park
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