Find cheap flights to Europe and visit Berati, one of the oldest cities in Albania, is a collection of white Ottoman-style houses built into the hillsides. The windows in all the houses are what gives it its nickname, City of a Thousand Eyes. There’s a castle and a well-preserved collection of mosques and medieval Orthodox churches that were spared by the communists. Berati was a government-designated “museum city.” It’s now a UNESCO site.
Hotel Mangalemi is a little inn in what was once the Muslim Quarter, and home of the Ottoman king, or pasha, of the time. There’s a mosque across the street, a Catholic church nearby, and and a temple built by Bektashi followers, a Muslim sect, sometimes identified by their whirling dervishes. You awake to church bells and the Muslim call to prayer.
