Count the windows stacked up a hillside in Berat

Berat's old houses climb the hill above the Osum river in rows, white walls one above the other, each with a long run of windows looking out over the roofs below. There are so many of them stacked over each other that the town's nickname is One Window Above the Other.

Berat comes at the end of the longest day of the trip, six to seven hours down the country from the Alps with the stops. Nobody minds once it comes into view.

The first look is from the river, in the evening, as the lights come on in all of them, which is the only time anybody attempts the count and the moment everybody gives up on it. The next morning the walk goes up the hill and inside the castle walls at the top, to the icons of Onufri, the sixteenth-century painter Albania calls the greatest of his time.