Shkoder street dogs

One of the first things I noticed in Tirana were the motley crews of street dogs wandering around the city. When we arrived in Shkoder, it was apparent that the problem here is even bigger. In both cities the street dogs are friendly and look well nourished. I remember reading some years ago that street dogs, contrary to popular belief, are generally not aggressive as they have been socialised by having so much contact with punters on the streets.
The Albanian dogs are generally larger breeds; most of them seem to have a bit of labrador in their bloodlines. Nearly all of the street dogs have tags on their ears, which means the authorities have neutered or spayed them. That has to be a good thing. I did a little reading about the situation and it seems to have become a bigger problem since Covid. Lots of dogs bought during lockdown and then dumped on the streets when life started to get back to normal.
There is now a shelter in Shkoder, I believe it's the first anywhere in Albania. There's also lots of private citizens helping out by trying to arrange for adoptions, but getting them to cope with domestic life is apparently pretty tricky as they are so used to wandering the streets they find life challenging inside four walls. The dogs seem to have a sixth sense in the traffic. I saw one today who made a couple of attempts to cross the road only to back off at the last minute when he or she sensed an approaching vehicle.
Sadly there's some reports which suggest local authorities have used brutal means of euthanizing the dogs. I won't go into the details here.
Here's a few shots of the dogs we encountered today enjoying some time in the spring sunshine.

In between dog spotting, we also found time to climb the hill to the Rozafa Castle. It's a good 45 minute walk from downtown and be aware the signposting is next to useless. We found ourselves a little geographically embarrassed until a local gent gave us some directions in Albanian, which seemed to indicate that we were headed in the wrong direction. Plug in Google maps before you start out. It might save you a little time!
The climb up is reasonably steep and very slippery. Wear some good shoes, take a hat and apply sunscreen as it's very exposed. The castle sits about 130m above sea level and it's earliest remains date back to the 3rd or 4th century CE. There's some evidence of a very early Christian settlement of the site. In the middle ages it served as a Catholic Church and then a mosque when the Turks took over. That's all a pretty familiar story around here. It was also the site of a famous siege during the First Balkan War and then the Italians did their best to destroy the building when they invaded in 1939. Somehow or other, there's still stuff to see there and it's well worth the walk up the hill.

After expending all that energy, we decided it was time to stop for lunch. We crossed the pedestrian bridge over the river and found it populated by the usual tourist traps. We came across one restaurant called Elvisi. The owner says his name is Elvis, and he seems like he's seriously into his seafood. Elvis says that everything he serves is bought fresh from local fisherman on a daily basis. He told us that nothing is frozen. There's no written menu and the options were limited but I suspect you can get a great meal if you're a serious seafood eater. However, it's extremely expensive by Albanian standards and Elvis doesn't take credit cards. Given we were running short on Albanian Lek we had to search further afield.
We then came across a place called Amerika Restorant, not that you would know it's name from the front of the building. Again, there's no written menu, but the woman who runs the place has great English and she will talk you through the options. Let her guide your choices. You won't go wrong. The meatballs and stuffed pepper were absolute highlights, but you also can't go past the bean goulash and pilaf rice with yoghurt. I think the lunch cost us something like 1200 Lek. The food is locally sourced and prepared freshly on the premises. There's also a nice courtyard for lunch on a sunny day.