Welcome to a very hot, very beautiful day here in Tirana in Albania, I'm here
because tomorrow morning and giving the opening keynote speech at the AllWeb
Conference, but today I've got the opportunity to explore this fabulous
city, so fancy joining me welcome to RogVLOG.
The AllWeb team had booked me into the Sky Hotel right in the centre of Tirana
and that's where I headed first to freshen up before heading out to explore the
city.
The room was modern, spacious and clean and the bed was extra comfortable. After
settling in, I decided to hit the streets and explore the city of Tirana.
This part of town is called the Block and it's chock-a-block full of cafes,
bars, restaurants and nightclubs and all of them seem to be open 24/7.
I love it there's a bar or nightclub down every little nook and cranny.
It's only 10 a.m. in the morning and it's is already about 30 degrees and I'm
sweating buckets, so I'm just going to go to the Grand Park where I believe the
air's a little fresher.
Well it's definitely cooler in here, beautiful park, but I don't think I've
don't think I've cooled down enough yet.
At the bottom of the park is a spectacular lake right here in the
middle of the city.
I finally cooled down, beautiful cool breeze coming off that lake has finally
worked its wonders.
In another part of the park, I found these statues of former Albanian leaders.
These World War Two memorials make very sobering reading, it's a part of history
I didn't know anything about, the Albanians fought very hard to protect
the Jews from the Holocaust, more than probably anybody else during the war.
Back into the city to check out the University and the Museum of Archaeology.
Now this building behind me is known as the Pyramid and it was one of the
remnants from the Communist era, now there is talk of them sprucing it up and
turning it to some sort of memorial.
Look this tree-lined Boulevard, that's one of the great things about exploring
a new city, is just following your nose and seeing what you can find down dark
alleys and tree-lined boulevards. Tirana's bar and cafe culture makes it a great
city just for people watching.
This is the main square in Tirana Skanderbeg Square is surrounded by
opera houses, banks, museums and right in the distance you can see the spectacular
mountain range that surrounds the city.
This is a magnificent stunning open space right in the heart of the city
quite unlike any square I've ever seen in any city before. I love this
old-school fairground roundabout or do you call them carousels - dunno but it
looks beautiful here in the square.
Well I've been walking for ages now and I'm in desperate need of some water and
some coffee. So I headed back to the Block, past the Catholic Church, past some
gorgeous fountains and discovered an amazing restaurant for lunch, and like I
said before, all the greatest places in Tirana seemed to be down little
alleyways, the food was delicious, forget the coffee,
ah sometimes only beer will do. Well after exploring the city I thought I'd
better come and check out the conference venue for tomorrow so here it is let's
go and have a look inside.
I just love looking behind the scenes as he put everything together,
those are my slides up on the screen that they're just running through at the
moment, it's a little chaotic now but tomorrow is going to be fantastic this
is a great venue for the conference.
Marketing is broken, busted, smashed, kaput except when it's done with integrity
and the deep almost obsessive understanding of the customer.
Well the sun is setting on the AllWeb conference here in Albania,
I've had an absolutely fantastic day, a great audience, really energetic, really
interactive, and I've managed to take my John the Wineman story to a wider
audience here in Albania, if you enjoyed this episode of RogVLOG please do
subscribe to my YouTube channel and I'll see you on the next one.