We live in Shkoder, Albania but we take trips to Tirana, the capital city. It is about a two hour bus ride. Edward has friends there from when he had been a missionary there over 20 years ago.
Everytime that we have been there, Edward has taken us out to celebrate our arrival there by going to the best pastiçeri, or bakery, that I have been to. We get ice cream there, which is a treat! It is much cheaper than in the US.
This picture was taken at the end of July. It was a very warm evening. Our little guy was an absolute, but happy mess by the time he was done.
This park sits across the street from the pastiçeri/bakery. This shot only shows about a third of the park. It is full of older men (they are called plak, pronounced like plock) playing dominos and the like.
We broke up the scene a little bit. We found a spot to sit down and eat our ice cream.
I'm I'm grateful for the crosswalks and traffic lights in Tirana. (There are no traffic lights in Shkoder.) Even with those, crossing the road is a bit dangerous. However, twenty years ago there were almost no traffic lights, so things are improving!
The photo above is in an area that we walk through frequently that has lots and lots of furniture shops, new and used. Men with trucks sit around waiting to deliver, as most people in the city don't have cars. If you're able to look closely, there are several white trucks lined up.
Here's a truck loaded with mattreses.
As the sidewalk is loaded with parked bikes, this truck is loaded with a sofa set.
Off it goes!
The following day we purchased a sofa, and Edward and a couple of the younger kids happily got a ride home in the truck.
One of our American friends there broke her back. Thankfully she's not paralyzed. Daring not to use her pullup bar anymore, she passed it on to us. The kids love using it!
We finally had some time to go sightseeing on our last visit there a couple of weeks ago. We went by the apartment that Edward had lived in years ago. It's also where we stayed when I went with him for a week-long visit when I was newly pregnant with our first child, in 2004.
We then walked by our friends' (the Pikes) former apartment. They were Americans who had also been on the mission team with their two young children.
Then, on to the Pyramid. My kids are the ones ¾ of the way up it. They kids had heard Edward talk about this place many times. He and his friends would often go there. There was an internet cafe under it, back in the day when internet access was very limited.
Edward tells the story about the time when he and a couple of his friends climbed up to the top. It has recently been remodeled. Formerly, there were no stairs. Anyway, his friends started sliding down to the bottom. Edward tried, but his shoes kept stopping him. He got the idea to sit on his book bag. Well, that certainly did the trick! He started flying down. He put his feet down to slow down, but now they did nothing to stop him. He went racing to the bottom, flew over the sidewalk and onto the grass. I didn't realize until we were there last week, but that was the one and only time that he ever went up to the top. It was quite a scary experience for him.
I'm not usually scared of heights, but somehow it was a bit terrifying for me being up there with all of my kids, and all of those little steps going down.
After that, we walked to a huge park in Tirana. Edward showed us where they used to have baptisms, and an area where they would have gatherings for the teens' group at church.
Our kids had fun in this little tree house, there at the park.
Hopefully this gives you a window into another little area of the world.
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