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Today we drove to Shkoder, I know where the hell is that. Shkoder is Albania's second city. On the way to Albania we had to go through Podgracia, the capital of Montenegro. It was the strangest capital city I have ever been in. It was virtually empty and there were hardly any buildings or shops, it was bizarre. In that area there is a huge lake that spreads into both Albania and Montenegro. It spread as far as the eye could see. When we got into Albania the whole environment changed. Straight away you could see a difference. Dad had his heart set on seeing some of the thousands of concrete mushrooms built in the 70s to protect Albania from an invasion, which never happened. When we saw one it was a dilapidated concrete mushroom that lived up to my extremely low expectations. The Albanian countryside had half built buildings and sort of houses in the middle of fields with no roads leading to them. The whole place gave the impression of borat's town, kuzak. When we finally got into Shkoder there were hundreds of these small independent shops selling fake football tops and Albanian beach towels. The book had recommended a restaurant which we were very happy to find as I had expected to be having lunch at some back street kebab house. The restaurant was also an ethnographic museum so it had some nice agricultural decor. The menus had quite dubious English translations on the menu there was the option of having 'warm cheese in pot' or what I had for a main 'meat spikes' despite this the food to my surprise was really nice we had starters and lots of drinks and it came to a total of just €28! (Dad was extremely happy).
We left the restaurant, 3 concrete mushrooms and a patriotic statue later and we had walked around the city which was really hot but I did get a 'legit' pair of ray bans for €5! Dad was desperate to try and find a fridge magnet so sent mum out and she came back with one and a pair of Albanian flip flops! We drove back home to Budva and went for an evening swim by the old town. It was quite cold but the sunset was nice. We walked back to the hotel and mum cooked us some supper!
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