Today was my birthday and I was travelling south to the Unesco town of Berat with my friend who had joined me. Most westerners who come to Albania head to its Mediterranean coastline for its unspoilt beaches. Not one for beaches, I was more interested in the culture and history and planned to visit its two Unesco towns Berat and Gjirokaster.

As Tirana does not have a bus station finding information on where to catch one to Berat was confusing. The hotel had mentioned one location, and the tourist info office yesterday mentioned different places.

The hotel told us to take a city bus first and ask the driver. City bus was 30 Lek ($0.30) and they told us to get off in a different position from what I had been told earlier. Here there were waiting minivans and we had to wait about 20 mins for it to fill with more passengers.

The furgon (minibus) price was 500 Lek ($5). Albania has a very good highway system paid for by the EU so we got there quicker than the information provided on the internet. It only took two hours to reach and we were the last two left on the bus. Along the way we had been pickup up passengers along the roadside and dropping them in small towns.

When we arrived in Berat we had to orient ourselves on my map as he didnt drop us where I expected him to. Berat is known as the City of a Thousand Windows and we had to navigate the steep cobbled stairs to find out guesthouse.

We asked a local who turned out to be the owner waiting for us. I knew we had booked a historic home but we were completely amazed by what we discovered.

I had booked a three bedroom, two story villa, with two bathrooms, huge antique kitchen, and ample room to accommodate a dozen people. We had the whole house for a bargain price of 30 Euros ($45) between the two of us. If a group of six had booked they would be paying 5 Euros each!!

You can never tell on booking sites what somewhere is really like as they just show a picture of the bed and a couple of room shots. This was like being able to stay in any number of ethnography museums I had visited, I was scared to touch anything.

I made a video witih full guided tour which I posted on youtube here https://youtu.be/-W1IW7OIcjo. This home has also been used by the UK, US, and Isreali Ambassadors. There is also a lower level I named the 'dungeon' as I wasnt sure if rats or something lived down there, but another bathroom with washing machine and extra storage.

The owner Papi spoke very little english. I mentioned we were going to Gjirokaster tomorrow when he said breakfast would be at 9am. He showed in his book of notes the bus leaves 830 but he couldnt explain to us from where?

We decided first priority was to find out where to get this bus for tomorrow and look for the tourist info office. The town has a new quarter with long pedestrian boulevard. We found a travel agency that said we need to take a bus to the bus station on the other side of town, but they werent sure exactly. This was getting a bit worrying.

Wandering around we found the city university and orthodox church but no sign of the tourist info office.

The orthodox church was nice and faced a mosque opposite a large plaza.

Behind the mosque was the medieval Turkish quarter consisting of the Kings Mosque, Han (inn), and Tekke (religious order). The lady said we had to buy a ticket but we didnt see anywhere to buy one.

The Tekke had interesting detailed painted artwork for interior decoration as we peered in from outside.

We decided to head up the hill to the city fortress seeing if there was a way there to head to the bus station.

It was a long steep climb up and we passed by the Ethnography Museum. It closes midday and reopens at 4pm but we didnt think we would see anything of more interest than our guesthouse which was a museum in itself.