Howdy all, and it’s that time of the week to give you another patented ‘Accommodation Review’, and today I take you to a little budget place I stayed at in Tirana, the capital of Albania. This is a city that really impressed and surprised me. I only had the one day and one night (in reverse order) in Tirana, and I was looking for a cheap place to stay that was well located. Tirana Square Hostel was both.

I booked for two nights but could only stay one, leaving by ferry late at night on the second night. I decided to book for two days so I had the room until I was ready to leave to the ferry port in Durres. And this turned out to be useful.

This one I booked through booking.com. Can’t remember if it was a better price or what, I just did. The hotel by the way was originally called the ‘Tirana Inn Hotel’ and just a couple of days before I arrived it changed its name to ‘Tirana Square Hotel’.

After arriving at the bus station in Tirana it was a tram ride into the centre of town for 20 minutes and then no more than five minutes walk to the hotel. To be honest, it felt a little like a hotel in Thailand at the entrance – a budget one, small desk in front of a tiny office, three youngsters sitting there with laptops or phones playing games.

I encourage you to look at the hotel’s write up and photos in booking.com HERE. You’ll see it looks bright, very clean, white walls. I can see it is the same place when I look closely but the photography has done a brilliant job in smoothing all the roughness out of the rooms. It actually makes it look like a very nice place to stay indeed.

And that’s not to say it wasn’t. but conversely it isn’t how it looks in the photos and I am seriously regretting not taking my own at the time. It’s a lot smaller and more basic than it looks. But I paid less than 20 Euros a night there and it certainly is good value for money. But it is budget digs and some of the photos they use could fool you into thinking otherwise.

I was on the ground floor. The corridor outside my room had windows to the outside which were mostly open. The noise of the city didn’t bother me, but the rooms also have windows between the room itself and the corridor. Glass is not a great insulator for heat or cold, and all the rooms along the corridor were the same so there is nothing really in the way of sound proofing. It wasn’t that bad I guess but I could here the TV in the next room as I tried to sleep and it took a couple of hours to fall asleep because of that.

There was a cupboard in the room and some basic bedside tables, from memory enough power sockets for charging my devices. The window needed a thicker curtain too. The bathroom was very pokey indeed and the photo I have here is not my photo but that is my bathroom. How they made it look so big I have no idea. At the end of it is a sort of boarded up window and the office on the other side of that.

The bed was okay, not super comfy. The place could have been cleaner but wasn’t BAD either. The staff were actually super helpful and friendly, they were the biggest plus out of the place. It had a decent vibe, and I think would be a good choice for young backpackers who felt the need to not stay in a dorm for a few nights and have a little privacy.

The location was also a huge plus, and sometimes you have to take the bad to get the good. Saved money, easy to get to most places I wanted by foot. You get what you pay for in most places and you do here. I’ve stayed in plenty worse.

Andy’s Ratings:

Location: 4.5.5

Value for Money: 4/5

Cleanliness: 2/5

Noise: 1.5/5

Service: 3.5/5

Total: 15.5/25 [62/100]

Thanks for popping by today! Take care – and May the Journey Never End!