shala river, albania 🦅

Last summer, I went to Charlotte River in Albania, and it's one of the best places I've been. So upon request, here is a more in-depth video about my time here. So, to get to Charlotte River, I either have to fly into Podgarika, like we did, or you can also fly into Turvana. Ending on flat price and stuff, one might be better than the other, but they both take about an hour to get to Skoda. This is our driver, what a baby. You have to go through border control. Going for mention I grew to Albania, but it's really chill. Didn't take us more than like two minutes. We stayed in Skoda that night, of course, and then you get picked up at about, I think it was 5am. The next morning, by your accommodation, four Charlotte River. So they drive you about like a two hour drive. It's quite brutal. The boat ride takes like an hour to get from the ferry terminal to Charlotte River. I just passed the fuck out for the entire thing, though. So for me, it went really quickly. And then you get to Charlotte River. Oh, we stayed in a place called Eagle's Land. There's like a few different ones in this specific spot, but if you look on Google Maps, just type in Eagle's Land, and you'll see that there's like a few. But this was super cheap. It was 75 euros for three nights. It's like summer camp, aesthetic, all very woody. So that's our accommodation there, and you literally just walk straight up the door, and then you're here. Ah, dream about this place. This place is fucking unreal. It's a little bars that are up on the stilts over the water, so you can have some beers there, or just... You have this whole place to yourself every single day, like it was just us here. There was like one of two groups in our actual accommodation, and then there was probably like another 15 people in total at the other guest houses. So this part of the river, which is like 200 meters up from where we were staying, completely to ourselves. Because the water comes down off the mountains, this is actually really fucking cold. But it's great because they have all the bridges. Just plop off the little bridges and float down. It's great. So you're going to have to do like the walking into the water can be really hard, but just plonking into the water is chill, literally. The staff are so nice as well. It was Emma's birthday, and we obviously don't have access to a fucking cake out there. So we told them that it was Emma's birthday, and they made a cake. I know it's not the prettiest cake ever, but they did the best that they could with what they had. Like they didn't have to do that at all. Also, they came down at like four p.m. every day and opened up the bar, and it was just like a free-for-all. They were just pouring spirits in our mouths and like, help yourself to the fridge. So shit got weird after four p.m. every day. They made you like those little like doughnut balls every morning, and you would dip them in honey, and then they'd make you coffee as well. They were just, it was just such a level of routine. Like you just wake up every day, go have breakfast, cross your little bridge, pick up your dog friend along the way, and then just laying under the sunbeds all day. If this isn't heaven, I don't know what it is. We loved it so much. Highly recommend.