In Theth, I deliberately chose to stay somewhere far from the end of the trail. In fact, after arriving in the village, I still had to walk a whole 45 minutes to reach my accommodation.
The reason was that I knew I wanted to hike to the Blue Eye the next day, and staying at Shpella Guest House would give me a big head start, not to mention a shorter hike back. Furthermore, it’s located right near the Kulla tower and Theth Church. But despite its high review score, location, unfortunately, was the only thing I found positive about Shpella.
To save money, I stayed in a shared dorm room. But in pricey Theth, even a shared room cost me about 2000 lek per night. While I always avoid shared dorm rooms in cities, the hostel experience is usually fine in national parks.
At such places, from my experience, most people hike in the day and are dead tired by evening. As such, I’ve rarely had issues with noise at a dorm room in a national park. But Shpella was different.
The guest house has an attached restaurant located right next to the dorm, and it’s supposed to close at 22:00 or 22:30 (still too late for such an environment, in my opinion). But management is very flexible with their guests as long as they keep spending money at their overpriced restaurant (which serves mediocre food, I might add).
I really got the impression that they couldn’t care less about the other guests who simply came to hike and not blow loads of cash on drinks. As such, hikers staying at Shpella have to put up with loud music past 1 am and the hollering and shouting from drunk guests partying right outside the rooms.
To make matters worse, the owners had a terrible attitude and never apologized or took any sort of responsibility. I’d have to say that not only was Shpella my worst accommodation experience in Albania, but probably in all of the Balkans!
It turns out that hikers actually make up a small percentage of all those staying in Theth. Loads of Tirana residents and international tourists flock to the village in the summer and use guesthouses like Shpella as their personal party spaces (and I imagine these are the people behind most of Shpella’s positive reviews).
Now that you know where NOT to stay, where should one stay in Theth? If you’re planning on doing the Blue Eye hike, I’d look for somewhere relatively near Shpella.
The high-rated Bujtina Polia seems like a good option. While it does have an attached restaurant/bar, there don’t seem to be any mentions in the reviews about noise and sleep issues. Guesthouse Marashi is another high-rated place nearby, though numerous guests have complained about noise in the reviews.
If you’re only hiking from Valbonë to Theth and want to put your bags down as soon as you reach the village, look for somewhere near the trailhead. The village’s only market happens to be around here as well. Guest House Flodisa seems like a good option in this area.
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