Amateur Traveler episode 856. Today the Amateur Traveler talks about Roman ruins and hikes, castles, and mosques, beaches, and the blue eye as we go to the country of Albania. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. Let's

talk about Albania. I'd like to welcome the show Norm Bauer, travel journalist, author of nomadic travel for all

ages and you can find norm at travel Younger.com and Norm has come to talk to us about Albania.

Norm, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Chris. It's a pleasure being here.

Thank you for having me.

And what is your connection with Albania?

My wife and I have been full-time nomads since 2019 and Albania just happened to be one of the countries

that we've had on our radar pretty much since 2019. When we left, we hit Italy and Spain,

and then we had to leave the Schengen region,

and then we had to go to a non-Shengen country.

And we went to Croatia, which was non-Shheng in at that time, and then we started looking for other places to go.

And we identified Albania as being very similar to Croatia, only even less expensive, still a beautiful coastline, but the circumstances

didn't quite come together in 2019, but in 2022 they did because we were right next

door in Greece and our time in Albania,

which was about six months except for six weeks outside the country,

was just a phenomenal experience

and we got a chance to really see the beauty and the affordability of Albania for sure.

Excellent, and why should someone who isn't a full-time nomad go to Albania?

So here's the thing. Travel is back. I think that you as a travel

podcaster and anyone who's listening to this is either a want to be or a real

traveler and unfortunately along with the fact that travel is back comes everything that goes with it including

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