Welcome back! If you’ve been following along on my foodie adventures from our Fall 2017 Vegan Eurotrip, you may have noticed that the title of this post is a taaaaad different. It is focused on the countries rather than a specific city. Not only will I share the struggle (it was real) of finding vegan food in Albania, and give you the scoop on our our 3+ hour drive to across the border of Montengro (and then later back across the Albanian border) to find a veggie burger, but I also changed it from Where to eat to What to eat…these destinations were much more challenging for plant-based travel so I can’t really tell you where to go, but rather how to modify the menu.
We had known going in that we would face dining challenges at this particular stop. You can find Albanian vegan restaurants with research but when visiting 8 countries back to back we didn’t have too much time to plan or go too far off our chosen route.
ALBANIA
Our first stop in Albania was in Krujë, a hilltop village that had us white-knuckling the whole drive up – narrow roads, steep inclines, and hairpin turns accompanied us the whole way to the top! No vegan-specific restaurants here…in fact very few restaurants at all. We settled at one, that promised a decent spread of veggie-based plates and an incredible sunset view. I was hesitant eating in a place that cooked calf brain soup in the same kitchen but a girl has to eat.
Restaurant Alba Kruje
We ordered:
- French fries
- Vegetable soup
- Veggie salad
- Bread
- Roasted zucchini and eggplant
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- Non-vegan restaurant meal hodgepodge part 1: french fries
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- Non-vegan restaurant meal hodgepodge part 2: vegetable soup
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- Non-vegan restaurant meal hodgepodge part 3: veggie salad
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- Non-vegan restaurant meal hodgepodge part 4: bread
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- Non-vegan restaurant meal hodgepodge part 5: roasted zucchini and eggplant
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- Gorgeous sunset from our table at Restaurant Alba Kruje.
MONTENEGRO
Shkoder was the next stop on our Albanian adventure. And there are no vegan restaurants there…so we jumped in the car, trekked over an hour each way over the Albanian boarder (not the smoothest experience – we did it four times by road in total) and found us a cute little cafe in Podgorica, Montenegro. It wasn’t all vegan and it was nothing to write home about but we had a great little adventure! As for the struggle about the border crossing from Albania to Montenegro I promised in the intro? I’ll have to rack my brain for more details and get back to about that. I may have mentally blocked it out due to all the stress!
Culture Club
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- Inside is really well decorated! But people smoke inside there…beware.
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- Think this might have had something to do with falafel and mushroom gravy…?
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- Veggie burger for the win!
Because their website is not functioning I can’t actually remember all the details of our order! It hit the spot though! Here’s some visuals to get you through the disappointment of a lack of description.
This is a super short post but that was pretty much it for this leg of our journey. We just bopped around and picked through various food to get through our days. The hotel we stayed at in Durrës allowed for a couple nonspecific options and luckily we were very near a little shop with snacks and fresh produce to hold us over. Thank goodness we had an easier time in Macedonia and Bulgaria – the last two stops on our whirlwind of a Eurotour!
Thanks for reading!
Hi Inge! Traveling can be so complex! I’m sending the link of this post to my partner – he’s got the better memory for the gritty details!
Please, tell me about your experience crossing the border? I am planning a roadtrip and want to go from italy to albania by ferry and crossing the border at skhoder to montenegro. But if it is such a hassle i won’t bother and just take the ferry to montenegro or greece and skip albania, but that would be a dissapointment. Would love to hear about your experiences so I know what I can expect.
Hi Inge,
I did that wrong before…
Sending my partner the link to your question so he can answer. He’s got the better memory for the gritty details!
Hi Inge,
That’s actually what we did, we drove from Skhoder to Montenegro.
We did hit a big snag because we didn’t get travel insurance for Europe on the car so they made us buy it at the border, I think it was about 30 Euro for the day? It wasn’t too much of an issue but took a little while.
If you’re taking a bus it may be different? We crossed the Macedonian border and it took a long time as they had to inspect everyone’s hand luggage and the bus.
Hope that helps!