Budget Destination of the Year

Matt Gross for The New York Times "Gjirokaster is a bustling town of hilly, slippery cobblestoned streets and slate-roofed Ottoman houses."

By MATT GROSS

Published: December 10, 2006 in the New York Times

NOT long ago, to suggest Albania as a destination of any kind, even a frugal one, would have been the height of chutzpah. Within five years of Albania’s abandoning Communism in 1992, a Ponzi scheme destroyed the nascent market economy and widespread rioting turned Albania into a byword for rampant lawlessness. It was not, except for aid workers and smugglers, on anyone’s map.

In the last several years, however, Albania, continue>>>

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