Balkan Treasures: Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo

Few European capitals surprise quite like Tirana. This is a city in full stride – colourful and alive with an energy that only comes from a place rediscovering itself with enormous enthusiasm. The communist-era bunkers have been turned into art spaces, the boulevards are lined with vibrant cafés, and the mountains ring the city on all sides like a promise of the landscapes to come.

This evening, you'll meet your Tour Leader and the small group of fellow travellers you'll share this journey with, before sitting down to a welcome dinner that offers your first taste of Albania's generous table – think slow-cooked meats, wild herbs, and the kind of hospitality that sets the tone for everything that follows.

Before the sights, something to savour: a hands-on cooking class at a beautiful farm estate, where you'll roll up your sleeves and learn to prepare traditional Albanian dishes – think fërgesë roasted peppers, byrek pastries and slow-roasted lamb. After cooking, it's out to the farm to pick the fresh vegetables and fruits that will accompany the meal, before sitting down together to enjoy what you've made. It's a deeply warm, truly Albanian experience: food as connection, as generosity, as story.

Then, onwards to Berat – the 'City of a Thousand Windows', named for its distinctive Ottoman houses stacked up the hillside, each with great rows of wide-eyed windows looking out over the valley below. Our walking tour takes us up through the cobblestone streets to the old castle quarter, where Byzantine churches and mosques sit quietly side by side, and the National Onufri Museum houses some of the finest Orthodox iconography in the Balkans. The views from the top are worth every step. The evening is then yours to explore Berat's waterfront restaurants and cafés at your own pace.

The road into North Macedonia is half the pleasure of getting there. It climbs and winds through a landscape of olive groves and mountain passes before descending to the shores of Lake Ohrid – one of the oldest and deepest lakes in Europe, its water so clear and still it looks like poured glass.

We'll stop first at Sveti Naum, a monastery complex perched above the southern end of the lake, where the springs of the River Crni Drim bubble up mysteriously from the lakebed itself. A short boat tour glides us through the crystal-clear shallows, past reeds and willows, with the old monastery reflected perfectly in the water behind you – the kind of scene that feels suspended in time.

We'll then continue along the lakeside to Ohrid, where we'll settle in for two nights. The town's waterfront restaurants are worth exploring this evening, particularly for the lake trout, a local specialty that has been caught and cooked here since Roman times.

Ohrid has been called the 'Jerusalem of the Balkans', and a morning spent in its old town with a local guide makes it easy to understand why. This compact medieval city was once the spiritual heart of the Slavic world – a place of scholarship, religion and culture that shaped an entire civilisation. Today, its cobblestone lanes lead past more than 365 churches (one for every day of the year, so the story goes), and the whole place carries a kind of quiet, layered gravity that invites slow exploration.

This afternoon brings a glimpse into one of Ohrid's most distinctive crafts: handmade paper-making, a tradition that survives in only a handful of places in the world. You'll try your hand at the process yourself – pulping, pressing and drying sheets of paper using techniques that have changed little in centuries. Then, a visit to a pearl workshop where the lake's other great artisan tradition, pearl-making, is kept very much alive. Ohrid pearls are unique to this lake, produced using a closely guarded local method, and watching the craftspeople work is mesmerising. There's still time afterwards to find a table above the water as the afternoon light turns the lake to copper.

Leaving Ohrid behind, we'll head north through a changing landscape toward Tetovo – a town that captivates with one of the most impressive buildings in the Balkans. The Sarena Džamija, or Painted Mosque, is exactly what its name promises: every centimetre of its facade covered in intricate floral and geometric patterns, a breathtaking sweep of colour nestled into a riverside park. We'll take a short walking tour of the town before continuing toward Skopje.

As the afternoon light softens, we'll arrive at a winery on the outskirts of the capital – a region whose winemaking heritage stretches back thousands of years and whose producers are only now beginning to receive the attention they deserve. We'll walk the vineyards as the evening settles around us, before sitting down together for a dinner paired with North Macedonian wines and spirited conversation. Our accommodation is just a few minutes' walk away, which rather takes care of the rest of the evening.

Skopje is a city of contradictions, and our local guide navigates them brilliantly. We'll walk from the graceful 15th-century Stone Bridge into the old bazaar – one of the largest and liveliest in the Balkans, where the smell of freshly baked bread mingles with leather and spice. Along the way, we'll pass the Mother Teresa Memorial House – she was born here, a fact the city wears with considerable pride.

After pausing for an included lunch at the kind of spot only a local would choose, we'll leave the city for Matka Canyon, just 20 minutes away but feeling worlds apart. A boat carries us between towering limestone walls where the river has cut deep into the rock over millennia, past the entrance to Vrelo Cave and its astonishing subterranean chambers. The sound in the canyon is striking after the city's bustle – watch as the water turns dark green in the shadow of the cliffs above. Then, we'll make our way back to our hotel for the evening, where the vineyards and quiet of the countryside are a welcome contrast to the city's energy.

Kosovo, Europe's youngest country, is one of the most quietly compelling. Our first stop is the Monastery of Gračanica – built by Serbian King Stefan Milutin in 1321 and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The painted interior is extraordinary: every surface of the central nave covered in gold-haloed saints and biblical scenes rendered in Byzantine style, the colours still vivid after 700 years. It's the kind of place that stops you in your tracks.

We'll continue to Pristina for a short walk along the main promenade – a young, lively city that's still very much writing its own story – before the road takes us south to Prizren, where we'll be based for the next two nights. We suggest heading to one of the restaurants along the Bistrica River this evening to sample the local grilled meats and flaky pite pastries. As the sun drops behind the hills and the minarets begin their call across the old town, you'll understand why Prizren has a particular hold on everyone who visits it.

Take a moment this morning to simply stand in Prizren's old town and look around you. Within a few hundred metres you'll find a 15th-century mosque, a medieval Orthodox church, a 19th-century Catholic cathedral, a stone bridge that has crossed the Bistrica River for over three centuries, and a fortress on the hill above it all that has watched over this city since Byzantine times. Few places in the world carry quite so many layers in quite so small a space.

Our Tour Leader knows Prizren's stories the way only years of experience can teach – and their walking tour brings the city's past to life, including a stop for a glass of boza, the tangy, gently fermented traditional drink that has been sold from the same shop here for generations. After lunch at a local restaurant, the afternoon is given over to one of the most memorable hands-on moments of the tour: a filigree jewellery workshop, where you'll sit alongside master craftspeople and learn the delicate art of silver wirework that has been practised in Prizren for centuries. Whatever you make is yours to take home – a small, handcrafted piece of your time here to keep.

Our luxury minicoach winds through mountain passes that bigger buses often miss – opening up views of this dramatic corner of the world that most travellers simply never see – and the journey is very much part of the day. We'll stop in Kruja, a hilltop town whose old bazaar has been trading since Ottoman times, its timber-fronted workshops still busy with copper-beaters, rug-weavers and leather-workers. The view from the castle walls, with the plains stretching away below and the mountains stacked up behind, is one of the finest in Albania. Keep an eye out for the bundles of dried herbs and spices in the market stalls – the figs make for an excellent travel snack!

Then something rather special: tonight we leave the cities behind entirely, heading for a remote and charming stay tucked into the Albanian countryside for our final night together. Dinner is a shared affair around a long table, where there's a particular kind of happiness dining with new friends who started as strangers.

Our final morning begins with a visit to Bunk'Art 1 – the nuclear bunker commissioned by communist dictator Enver Hoxha that has been transformed into one of the region's most thought-provoking contemporary art spaces. Five storeys of tunnels and chambers beneath the earth, and an utterly fascinating window into a chapter of Albanian history that still shapes the country today.

We'll then return to Tirana for one last walk through the city: Skanderbeg Square, the elegant Boulevard of Martyrs, the Ethem Bey Mosque and the colourful facades that make the capital so visually alive. We'll round off the tour with an olive oil tasting – Albania is one of the world's oldest olive-cultivating nations, and sampling the different varieties pressed from across the country, served with local specialties, is a delightful final note. Mirëpafshim... until we meet again.