We’re not quite finished yet … another food blog

I’m sorry if I misled you with yesterday’s blog because we’re in Albania until Monday, so still time for more adventures. We thought it was the moment for more food as we’ve been having some extraordinary experiences, and because there’s a certain symmetry to our trip – more of which in a second.

First, a speciality in Gjirokastra. We had lunch in a little bakery taking the last two slices of byrek (filo pastry cheese pie). We then shared the local speciality oshaf, which is sheep’s milk and dried figs, so we thought you’d like a photo:

We stopped on our journey yesterday to eat lunch overlooking the sea – delicious grilled vegetables and tsatskiki. And when we had finished, we were presented with these delicious fruits (Sue’s hand for scale):

We stayed by the sea last night in a lovely hotel whose charming owner gave us two bottles of their home-grown olive oil in little raki bottles this morning. We ate in the hotel restaurant last night and, at the end of the meal, they brought us this dessert:

We stuck to salad and kofte – hardly big spenders – but at the end of our meal, they brought us two desserts!

And finally, tonight. Those of you who have been following since the beginning will remember that a couple of days before we left, the Financial Times wrote a piece about food in Albania and mentioned an agrotourismo where we stayed early in the trip. By coincidence, we are also staying in a second place they mentioned, the Mangalami Hotel in Berat (another UNESCO site – but more tomorrow about that). The article discusses the food at the hotel and mentions the delicious baklava: so here it is for your (visual) delectation:

And no, we didn’t drink the raki! Instead, we drank a bottle of delicious local wine (grown near Berat) which we had already encountered earlier on our trip: