Skip to main content

Spotted Today

Since the sun was shining this morning and spring seemed finally to have arrived I went for a walk round the neighbourhood and spotted a few places I hadn't see before.

The first is Pappasito's Mexican House. There are two restaurants I know of in the city that offer mexican style food - the Stephen Center and Serendipity. This is the first one I've seen advertising itself primarily as a Mexican restaurant. It will go on the ever lengthening list of restaurants to be tried.

On the same street I noticed this shop - L'Angelica. It seems that we can now get our herbal remedies and treatments right here. Worth a look.

Finally, Pita Pan. I'm assuming the word play here is deliberate, but I wonder how many people get it? Being an English speaker often I don't notice just how much English there is - especially in advertisements. I'm not sure where this place actually is since the shop beneath seems to deal in bikes and scooters.

Now I'm looking out the window at the pouring rain and listening to the thunder. Spring seems to be on the retreat again.

Comments

belle_fleur said…
mmm...i wonder how this place will do because Mex food is totally new for the Albanian people. I'm sure the foreigners that live in Tirana will appreciate it more than the natives.
Anonymous said…
Pita Pan was one of my guilty pleasures while in Athens. It's a fast food chain there, right?

Papasito's is my all-time favorite Mexican restaurant in Texas. There are three or four locations there that I know of.

Apparantly, the powers that be are luring me back to Tirana...
olli said…
I'm sure it will take a while for places like this to catch on among locals. I remember when new styles of restaurants were opening in Belfast. Lots of people there were wary of trying them - some probably still are. I suppose it depends how good they are.

Don't know about Pita Pan - I've never seen the name before. You are right about Pappasito's though. I just found their website on google. I think it's safe to assume that these are not franchise operations.
bizele said…
The rain and thunder storms are very typical for Tirana during this time of the year. When I was little I would imagine it as a war between winter and spring, as a last desperate attempt for winter to prolong its stay before the warm days of spring would begin.

I cannot wait until summer, so that I can explore my city myself.
ak said…
Actually, pita pan is closed now. The shop underneath sells sport accessories for automobiles. The billboard has been changed also.

Popular posts from this blog

Dy Rame Per Tirane

I was watching Top Channel last night, first the news, then Fiks Fare. According to them Tirana's citizens now have a choice not only between Rama and Olldashi, but also between Rama and Rama. A minor right-wing faction, Parti 'Balli Kombetar' , submitted papers to the election authorities registering their candidate, Akile Rama. The people on Fiks Fare got hold of the papers and sent a reporter and camera team to the address listed for Mr A Rama. After much ringing of the bell the gate was reluctantly opened by a middle-aged woman who refused to speak to the reporter and tried to close the gate on her. Back in the studio Saimiri and Doctori - the two presenters of Fiks Fare - revealed that Mr Akile Rama was 73 years old, in hospital, and did not know he was now a candidate for mayor. They also compared two documents - the papers submitted on his behalf, and a genuine document he had signed. The signatures were not even remotely similar. There was an interview with the lea

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.

Guide Turistike

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council , the future is bright for Albania. The Council ranks Albania ninth out of 174 countries for tourism growth over the next ten years. A summary of the Council's report is available, as is the full report complete with many pages of graphs, charts and spreadsheets. This summer I have seen a number of tourists on the streets of Tirana. Some of them may well be Albanian expats, or people of Albanian descent returning home to visit family, but others are genuine 'foreigners'. Judging from their appearance, they are probably best described as 'independent travellers' - the kind of people who are not interested in luxury hotels or crowded beaches. This is a good start, but independent travellers are not the kind of big spenders that the tourist industry likes. In the longer term, if Albania wants to bring in the kind of free-spending tourists who currently holiday in Croatia or Slovenia, there will have to be a huge invest