INCREDIBLE SOUTHERN ALBANIA ROADTRIP! #PART 1 # (Permet & Korca)

Time to start our Albanian road trip. I have my Albanian cop hat so I can just cruise through the country. We are officially on the road. This is our first ever road trip as Ways of the World. We're traveling throughout southern Albania for eight days. We're gonna stop in four different towns. Today is a short travel day. We're going from Gjirokastër to a small town called Permit. The scenery in Albania so far has been insanely beautiful, right? Like it's so so gorgeous here. It is ridiculous. Like it's just mountains on top of mountains on top of mountains on top of mountains. All the shots from the car are gonna have the giant crack because they're car rental. Tell us about our car rental agency. It was very unofficial. I mean the company is real. I respect that, but like everything was in cash. The deposit, the paying for the rental. I'm pretty sure we're just using someone else's car because we needed an automatic and I think this was the only automatic in Gjirokastër and that's why we have a Mercedes. We definitely didn't want a giant Mercedes but here we are with the Albanian's favorite car just blending in. After a beautiful one and a half hour drive we made it to Permit or someone just called it Permiti so I'm not really sure what to call it but we dropped off our stuff in our Airbnb slash hotel and the host is super nice. I can't wait chat with him because he speaks like perfect English and he's been here since like the communist dictatorship and in fact he said his friend escaped over the mountains across the border to Greece in like the 80s and there were like soldiers everywhere and if they found him they would have killed him and if he went then they would have killed his family. So already crazy stories. We're gonna show you around town first because it's kind of late. We had a crazy day. A visit to the farm that you saw in the other video. Long story. We made friends. We have family. We went to Saranda to pick up our drone. We're all over the place so it's late and we want to show you town a little bit of the town before sunset. Look at this view. Pretty nice huh? We said that there wasn't much to do in Permit but there's this beautiful viewpoint. I think that's called Stone Town. I think that's what our host said where you can climb up and get even better views. There's tons of like restaurants and bars so Permit has it going on. Nice town. The first impressions are pretty nice. I do like it here like the slow pace, fresh air. We're about to start the adventures today. We're going to the Banya Thermal Springs which apparently have restorative powers. So we're going to feel 10 years younger in about three hours and then we go for a hike and then we'll go backwards. There's like three different pools where people are hanging out and just enjoying the restorative waters. There's also like several like campgrounds in the area so I think people come here for like several days and try to soak up all the benefits. That's pretty cool. It's like right at the end of this big canyon which I think we can hike into later but for now we're gonna cross this old Ottoman bridge which looks pretty sketchy. I don't know what it is with the Ottomans and sketchy bridges. It just reminds me a little bit of Rize but actually even more sketchy because there's like no I don't know guardrails or whatever at all. It's much easier just to cross that little river there but we're gonna take the adventurous route and go over the historic bridge. So we learned that there are actually six different thermal pools and they each have different like benefits. I hope this one is for backpacks because lugging around those suitcases and heavy backpacks I could use it. I don't know what this is for. I hope it's for that. I cannot believe how pretty Albania is. This is crazy. How cool is this walking in the middle of the canyon? We forgot to show you Welcome. It's like a shared house. I think it has four rooms. We're on the bottom. There's a beautiful garden where people have breakfast here. We didn't have breakfast here this morning but we will. Kiwis, grapes that they make rakija with. Our clothes are hanging out there. They have a washer. Kitchen that we can all use. Our room is a mess but very very messy after like eight hours in this room. A huge bed. Very comfortable. We slept like babies last night and now we had to get up early and then always appreciated the work slash storage bed and a private bathroom Oh what is it called? Wet bath. Very traditional. Very popular here in Albania. That's it. But that is it for our time in Permit. Tomorrow we head to another town called Gorta. It's like an hour and a half away I think. Oh three hours away he says behind the camera. It's a little bit of a bigger city so we're gonna see you guys on the road tomorrow and we'll show you Gorta. Good morning. We are back on Albania's windy roads. It feels kind of weird to leave Permit after just two nights in town because usually we stay like at least four or five usually much longer actually but we're back on the road because we have to keep moving. It should be a really nice drive like already like the mountains are incredible as they always are here in Albania and we'll be getting very very close to the greek border like literally across the river so it should be interesting scenery. I really like driving in Albania. It has a bad reputation but at least here in the south the roads are completely empty and the views are spectacular so it's pretty easy going. I think we'll also drive through some cool like villages so we'll see how village life is. So I'm looking forward to today. We already got stopped by police but I have my police hat so they just waved me right through so it's already paying dividends. They're very nice yeah. I think he was telling me my lights were on or to turn them on. I have no idea what he said but okay we'll do. We kept it rolling. I'm very hungry and we literally saw the lady picking up the vegetables in the garden and they took a little bit to make this. It's all very fresh. I can't wait to eat because we're very very very very hungry. Are you hungry? Oregano. I bet she harvested that. This is the biggest city that we're going to visit in our road trip and it already feels a lot bigger than Pervit. We haven't seen much because we just got here and our first stop is going to be a brewery because in here in Korca they make Albania's most famous beer. One of Albania's most famous beers and it's called Korca and Gordon loves it and we're gonna go to the brewery to check it out. Cheers to Korca. Fresh Korca. You almost finished your beer now you can give us a fresh review. A fresh review of the fresh Korca. It's very fresh tasting. Some people talk smack about Albanian beer saying it doesn't have very much flavor which is kind of true. It's very light but when it's summertime you're sitting outside in the beer garden it's very very nice. I'm enjoying it and from here I think we'll go to another beer garden which apparently will have live music according to our Airbnb host. We're gonna go check that out because we haven't really heard any live music in Albania and that'll be our first night in Korca. This is the other place we're gonna go to. Seems really nice but the live music doesn't start until 9 p.m and believe it or not we're not party people. So right now it's 6 30 so we're gonna go have dinner and go home early because we have work to do and tomorrow we have an early day. Oh it's okay. Little street puppies. Wait, I want to play with puppies. No. I'm gonna put this here and play with a puppy. She's so smart. You're so smart. This is so cute. Just came here to take a quick look. It smells really really good and we need to find a place to eat so I think we'll find a place to sit down and show you around tomorrow because it looks very nice here in the Korca bazaar. Korca. Korca. Oh damn it. Korca. There's another Korca. There is a Korca. This is Korca. I'll link the video here. So tell us about Korca, Gordon. I rarely hear my full name but I will tell you about Korca. It's very relaxed and pleasant city. Like the weather is a lot fresher than anywhere else we've been. A lot of like green spaces like people walking around outside. A lot of older gentlemen like playing dominoes and ladies just like hanging out in the park. I wish we could like stay here for like 10 days. I feel like it's a city that would like really grow on us even though there's not like a ton to do. But I really like just like being here sitting on a park bench enjoying a coffee. Very chill town. I think someone took the puppy. She's the puppy mama. And I'm sad slash happy but she seems very sad. Oh she's showing her trick. That's her trick. Oh my gosh yeah. Oh what a good girl. Bravo. Bravo is what they say. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. We made it to the bazaar area. This is where we were yesterday and right now we're just walking around. I'm kind of shocked of how quiet it is. So it's very beautiful. Like the streets are like cobblestone and all the shops are adorable as you can see behind me. So we've done some digging and we think we found a pretty cool spot where the cool kids of course should hang out. It's weird because there are tons of like trendy bars and restaurants. We're just not seeing like the people. But they might be here. It might also just be like a Tuesday thing. So I'm not sure what's happening. But it should be good anyway. They have a lot of cocktails so I might as well be very happy and looks like they're gonna have a good food. So I might as well be happy again because she hasn't eaten today. I think it's pretty close so just five minutes this way. Found it. Let's see if you found the jam where the cool kids are. Well we're here so the cool kids are definitely here. So this is a very cool spot. It reminds us a lot of the radio bar in Tidana. They also have a great cocktail menu and as you can see we went for it. We're also getting fried chicken nachos. A little taste at home. No traditional Albanian food right now. But somehow we're still a little bit out of sync with Korča. There's not many people here. But we're going to try to go to the same place that we went to last night. The Panda Bar where they should have live music. That should be good. But we might have a couple of cocktails here because they're pretty affordable and just enjoy the vibe here. It's very very cool. Cheers. Cheers. So it seems like the people of Korča are finally out. It's 9.15. They just like to start a little bit later. We figured them out. The Korčans are party people. Well they're getting started at 9.15 and they'll stay up late. It's completely midnight. We're gonna go see if there's some live music somewhere and go to bed at like 10.30. Oktoberfest. We're gonna drink some beers.