“Someone has balanced a plastic chair on the narrowest cobblestone ledge you've ever seen, and it looks like it's been there for years.”

The minibus from Sarandë drops you at the roundabout near the obelisk, and for a second you just stand there with your bag, tilting your head back. Gjirokastër does that to people. The houses climb the hillside in stacked grey stone, their Ottoman-era roofs shingled in the same slate as the streets, and the whole city looks like it was carved from a single piece of mountain. Rruga Zejtarëve — the street you need — angles uphill from the obelisk, and you count three floors up a building that could pass for someone's grandmother's house. There's no glowing sign. There's a door, a staircase, and the sound of a television playing Albanian news from somewhere inside.

The walk up is the point. Gjirokastër's old bazaar is five minutes downhill, and the castle — the big, brooding Kalaja — is maybe fifteen minutes uphill if you don't stop to photograph every doorway, which you will. The town hasn't been overrun yet. A few tour buses pass through midday, but by evening the cobblestones belong to locals walking their dogs and teenagers sitting on walls looking at their phones. You hear your own footsteps here in a way you forgot was possible in a city.

Third floor, no elevator, no apologies

Hotel SS Kekezi is a bed and breakfast in the way that phrase was meant before it became a brand category. It's a family home with rooms to let on the third floor, and the family is very much still living in it. You check in with whoever answers the door. The staircase is narrow and tiled and smells faintly of cooking — something with peppers, always something with peppers. By the time you've hauled your bag up three flights, you've already decided you packed too much for Albania.

The rooms are simple and clean. White walls, firm beds, curtains that actually block the morning sun, which matters because the light in Gjirokastër arrives early and with conviction. There's a small bathroom with hot water that works — not instantly, give it a minute — and towels folded on the bed. No minibar. No slippers. No card explaining the hotel's philosophy. The WiFi password is written on a piece of paper taped to the nightstand, and it works well enough to send photos but not well enough to stream anything, which might be a feature.

What defines the place is the view. From the third floor, you look out over a cascade of stone rooftops falling toward the valley, and in the late afternoon the light turns everything the colour of warm bread. You can see the castle from certain angles. You can hear the muezzin's call from the mosque below, and then, almost immediately after, church bells from somewhere across the hill. Gjirokastër has been doing this layering act for centuries and doesn't feel the need to explain it.

“The whole city looks like it was carved from a single piece of mountain, and nobody seems particularly impressed by this except you.”

Breakfast is included, and it's the kind of breakfast that quietly ruins you for hotel buffets. Expect byrek — flaky pastry filled with cheese or spinach — fresh tomatoes, cucumber, olives, white cheese, bread that was baked that morning, and strong Turkish coffee served in a small cup that you will drain too fast. The family doesn't hover, but if you compliment the byrek, more byrek appears. I made the mistake of saying the word "delicious" once and ended up eating three portions. The dining area is small, shared, and has a television mounted on the wall that's always tuned to the news, which nobody watches but nobody turns off.

For dinner, walk downhill to the bazaar. There's a restaurant called Kujtimi that does tavë kosi — lamb baked in yogurt — and it costs almost nothing and tastes like someone's life's work. The old bazaar itself is a handful of stone shops selling wool socks, carved wood, and Soviet-era memorabilia that may or may not be authentic. A pair of hand-knitted socks costs about ALL 500, and they're better than anything you'd find in a design store back home. The whole town is walkable in an afternoon, but the point is to walk it slowly, twice, once in daylight and once after dark when the stone walls hold the day's heat and the streets go quiet.

The honest thing about Kekezi: the walls are thin. You will hear the family's television. You will hear the neighbour's dog at some point during the night — a single bark, then silence, as if the dog just remembered something and then forgot it. The staircase creaks. None of this is a problem unless you need a hotel to feel like a sealed capsule, in which case you're in the wrong town entirely. Gjirokastër is a place that breathes through its walls. The accommodation just matches the city.

Down the hill, one more time

On the morning you leave, the street looks different. Not because anything changed, but because you've learned its rhythm — the woman two doors down watering her plants at seven, the cat that sits on the same stone step every day like it's clocked in for a shift. You notice the obelisk at the bottom of the road differently now, too. It's not a landmark. It's just where you turn. The minibus to Sarandë or Tirana leaves from the main road, and the schedule is approximate in the way that Albanian bus schedules tend to be: it goes when it goes, and it always goes eventually.

Rooms at Hotel SS Kekezi start around ALL 3.500 a night, breakfast included. For that you get a clean bed on a stone street in a UNESCO town that hasn't yet learned to charge for what it is.