Admiral Hotel

I respectfully suggest that this hotel is avoided. The location is close to the intercity bus terminal, and the bathrooms are a good size and well-appointed. I changed rooms here, and both rooms had major problems with the air-conditioning: in the first room it simply wasn't working; in the second one it worked for 3 - 5 minutes then cut out, and a significant wait period was needed to get a further few minutes - clearly impractical if trying to sleep. Rooms are stuffy, and the excellent ceiling lights also generate a lot of heat on top of the already high temperatures. There are supposedly three wifi connections in the hotel - none of them worked during my stay, either in the rooms or in the lobby. The so-called reception is essentially unstaffed: there is a hand-rung bell on the counter to get attention from the staff member working in the cafe: in the mornings, this is a mid-teen youth who speaks some English; in the afternoons and evenings it is an elderly gentleman who speaks no English. Although the elderly gentleman eventually agreed to a room move, his initial response to the various problems was simply to shrug his shoulders. In both rooms, there are liquid stains on the walls, and in one room there were also numerous stains on the headrest. In my initial room, one window was permanently, but only slightly ajar, and could not be closed. This meant that the loud conversations from the service station below, plus street noise, could be heard clearly in the room. Finally, even if this hotel had none of these many issues, it is still overpriced - both before and after this stay, I have spent time in better hotels that included breakfast in their room rates in more touristy and expensive Albanian cities and towns at a cheaper price than the tariff here.