Visit Albania .guide

Decision

North or south with seven days?

The Alps and Shkodër at one end, the Riviera and Gjirokastër at the other, and about eight hours of driving between them. Seven days buys one of them properly. The month you travel in decides which, because the two halves of the country do not keep the same calendar.

Side by side

North or south with seven days?
 The north: the Alps, Shkodër and KomanThe south: the Riviera, Berat and Gjirokastër
When it is openFour usable months. The Theth road is closed roughly mid-November to late March, and the Koman ferry runs 15 April to 5 November.Something is open all year. The Riviera's beach towns shut for the winter; Gjirokastër and the Drino valley do not.
The best months, on this site's own gridsJune to September, and the Alps grid reads closed or avoid for the other eight.May, June and September on the coast, and April through June plus September and October inland.
What seven days holdShkodër, the ferry through the Koman gorge, a night in Valbonë, the pass to Theth, and out by road: Shkodër to Theth is a measured 92 km that takes about three and a half hours.Berat, then Gjirokastër, then the coast: three measured legs of 153, 152 and 59 km, with Bënjë and Butrint off them.
What goes wrongThe calendar. Booking the crossing for early June, before the pass has actually cleared, is the standing mistake.Crowds and prices rather than closures. Ksamil in the second week of August is the failure mode, and it is an expensive one.
The one reason to pick itThe Valbonë to Theth crossing, which has no equivalent anywhere else in the country.The variety. A UNESCO town, a canyon, a thermal bath and a beach fit inside the same week.

Our answer

South, unless you are travelling between June and September, in which case take the north. The reason is the season rather than the scenery: the south's grids give five or six good months at each end of the year and the Alps give four, so the north has to be spent when it is open and the south does not. What seven days will not do is both. Tirana to Shkodër to Theth and back is a week, and so is Tirana to Berat to Gjirokastër to the coast, and stitching them together spends two of the seven days in the car.

IfYou are travelling in July or AugustThe north. It is several degrees cooler and it is the half of the country that is actually in season.
IfYou are travelling in April, May or OctoberThe south. The Theth road may not be open and the pass will not be clear, while the Drino valley is at its best.
IfYou came to walkThe north, in September, which is the clearest month on the pass.
IfYou want a beach in the weekThe south. The north has a lake and a reservoir gorge, and neither is what you meant.

Sources: visitalbania.guide seed dataset (read 2026-08-23); Albania Voyagers, Shkodër to Theth (2026) (read 2026-08-25); Koman Lake Ferry (Berisha), operator timetable and prices (read 2026-08-25); Hungarian Dreamers, Valbona Pass, measured track (read 2026-08-25); OSRM over OpenStreetMap (ODbL), routed for each corridor (read 2026-08-26).