Note: This post concludes the travelogue I began a few weeks ago about the recent visit to Albania that my wife Mary Pat Treuthart and I made with our Spokane friends Ann and Matt. Click here to begin the series.

Travel, particularly international travel, fulfills several desires. It introduces you to new experiences, cultures, languages and differing ways of being in the world.

For me, though, travel also involves anxiety. Will I make my flight, will I make my connection, how will I get to the hotel where I booked a room, will the hotel hold the reservation that I made through (name your favorite website here)?

I’ve missed a number of connections. And I can still remember showing up at a Seattle hotel (that I won’t name) and having to deal with the snotty, I-could-care-less guy at the front desk. I recall his saying that he didn’t have a record of my wife’s having called, that he had no rooms available and simply shrugging when I asked him what we were supposed to do then.

On the positive side, while it may take weeks for it to happen, I typically do recall my travel experiences with fondness. I once spent a week in Paris, struck dumb by jetlag, and trudging from one Parisian site to the next. It was only in retrospect that I discovered how much I enjoyed simply walking the streets and talking to people in (very) rudimentary French.

Which is what I remember most about the days that Mary Pat and our friends spent in Albania. It wasn’t just that we were so surprised at how scenic the country is and how inexpensive everything was. The best part was the people we met and how friendly and accommodating they were.

There was the hotel employee in Tirana who, at short notice, cleared the way for us to get a table at a highly rated local restaurant. There was the host at the restaurant in the beach town of Vlorē who sat us on a terrace boasting a perfect view of the sea and who treated us as if we were celebrities.

I was especially charmed by the woman who, with her husband, ran the Da Luz Boutique Hotel in Sarandē , and who served us her own home-made pastries and breads – which, by the way, were delicious.

Best of all, though, was our driver Martin Mustafa. I’ve mentioned Martin in previous posts, he being the guy who picked us up in Tirana and shepherded us through the length of Albania, introducing us to a variety of Albanian food and drink experiences – all accompanied by his telling of the history that came with them.

In my last post, I shared the visit that we made both to the Butrint National Archaeological Park and Albania’s fabled Blue Eye. It was after our morning trek to the Blue Eye, and our braving both the heat and the crowds of other tourists that had flocked to the site, that Martin had one final surprise for us.

Not surprisingly, it involved a castle. Most, if not all, European countries have castles, of course, many of which sit perched on hills (think of Edinburgh Castle or of another Albanian fortress that I've written about, at Porto Palermo). And the same is true for the city of Gjirokastēr, over which the Gjirokastēr Fortress looms.

Like much of the rest of Albania, the city has a past forged by Greek and Ottoman rule. The fortress itself dates back to the 12th century, and it sits some 336 meters above the valley that encompasses the town proper. And though it’s huge, consisting of five towers, a museum, a clock tower and is the site of an annual Albanian folk festival, the fortress is most noted for the legend that it inspired.

At least the Albanian novelist and poet Ismail Kadare was so inspired. It was he who wrote a poem about Princess Argiro who, it is said, defied the invading Ottomans by jumping to her death from the castle walls – causing the death, too, of the child she was holding.

Taking one last look over the walls to the town far below, I could see just how fatal such a plunge would be. Which would mean that you wouldn’t have the chance to wend your way through the booths of the bazaar that, at least on that afternoon, we could see that half the city itself seemed to be visiting.

Then we were in Martin’s car, heading back to our last night in Sarandē, where we would bid him goodbye. He would head back to Tirana, while the next morning we were scheduled to catch the ferry to the Greek island of Corfu, which sits just across a couple of miles of water to the west.

It was later, on Corfu, that I asked Mary Pat, Ann and Matt to list their favorite moments of the Albanian trip. For Mary Pat, it was our afternoon in Butrint, walking among the various ruins that spoke of the country’s ancient past.

For Ann, it was the afternoon stroll (what the Italians call a passeggiata) that she and I took along Sarandē’s boardwalk. And for polyglot Matt, it was our visit to Rozafa Castle in the northern city of Shkodēr, when he was greeted by a class of Albanian high-school students, all of whom seemed thrilled at his ability to speak their native language.

For me, though, it was that late-afternoon drive back to Sarandē from Gjirokastēr. As Martin drove us over the road that trailed through mountains that stood between us and the sea, he turned on his car’s sound system.

And as we headed into the sun, amid the stark grays and browns of the mountains that vied with the vivid green of the forests and fields that sat between them, I listened as Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler sang the group’s hit song “Sultans of Swing.”

I’ve often wondered what thoughts might speed through my mind in those final moments before I die. Save for the birth of my daughter Rachel, and the joy I felt the first moment I held her in my arms, the memory of that experience would truly be one I would most want to recall.