Traveling with other people is always a chancy affair. It’s one reason why I prefer to go on cruises with thousands of other people rather than just a couple of dozen. I find that I can hide in a crowd.

Once, years ago, my wife Mary Pat Treuthart’s sister and her husband joined us on a weeklong trek through Costa Rica. The four of us share many common interests and we tend to get along well. They key, as Mary Pat explains it: We all enjoy a good laugh.

The problem came during our first couple of nights, which involved a stay in a bed-and-breakfast located just outside the capital city of San Jose. It was far enough outside the city center that we began to worry that the cab driver was trying to kidnap us.

He wasn’t. He was just having trouble finding the place. When we finally arrived, we liked the comfortable rooms we had been assigned. We also liked the fact that, for an extra price, we could arrange to have dinner, something we would share with the B&B’s other guests.

And here is where the problem was. During dinner, I sat across the table from a guy who hailed from Texas. And pretty quickly I gleaned that he wasn’t much for conversation. Regardless of what was being discussed around the table, he would wait for a person to finish talking before he would go off on a story of his own – a story that would have nothing to do with what was being discussed.

Pretty soon, I checked out and started scrolling through my camera, looking at the photos that I had taken earlier that day. And I thought, “Seriously? I have to endure this guy tomorrow night, too?”

I was happy when we finally headed out, our trek taking us from San Jose to Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, where we found lodging near Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio. And where we didn’t have to share dinner with a total bore.

But … that was then, and this is now. Since those days we’ve found plenty of opportunities to laugh, both together and with travel buddies. Case in point: Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been writing posts about our most recent tour of Albania, and I left off with our meeting up with our friends Ann and Matt, who had just flown in from Spokane.

They’d been delayed, had missed connections and actually had to spend the night in Warsaw of all places. This meant they arrived in Tirana – Albania’s capital city – a day late. Since we knew they’d be jet-lagged, and since we’d had a great dinner the night before at the nearby restaurant Era Vila, that’s where we took them.

And again, we had a mix of dishes – the traditional Albanian ones heavy with sauces – that all four of us enjoyed. And two of us ordered wine as well. And the whole meal came to less than $100 – far below what a comparable meal would cost in Spokane, say, at Luna, Wild Sage or Sorella in Kendall Yards.

It was the next day, though, that our tour of Albania really began (for the reasons why we chose Albania, click here). That was when we met Martin Mustafa, who runs a business called Eden Rent & Tours and whom Mary Pat fortuitously found through a simple online search.

I say “fortuitously” because Martin, besides being a good, safe driver, fluent in English and friendly to the extreme, proved to be knowledgeable not just about Albanian history and culture but also about food and wine. He put those lattermost skills to good use the first day when he drove us from Tirana north to the city of Shkodēr, which sits just south of another Balkan country, Montenegro.

En route Martin stopped at the Mrizi I Zanave Venari (winery/restaurant) where not only did we get a tour of both the cheese factory but also of the underground wine cellar. In the cellar we also got to sample some of the wines, which were surprisingly good (though I’m not sure why I should have been surprised).

That wasn’t all, though. Martin then led us to an outdoor leafy arbor under which a dozen or more tables were set up, with several parties already enjoying lunch. We sat and pretty soon were being served an array of cheeses and vegetables, breads (some stuffed with various fillings) and then plates of meats ranging from duck to pork to lamb. And, of course, wine was served as well.

And just as we were feeling full, out came dessert, which consisted of fruits and a cheesecake kind of confection covered with raspberries.

It was a pleasant experience, sitting there in the Albanian warmth, just a few miles from the village of Lezha, enjoying what was basically a feast – especially since it was occurring in a country that I had expected to be far more backward. I mean, for much of the 20th century, Albania was cut off from the rest of the world, its people victimized seemingly as much as North Koreans are these days by a repressive Communist government.

Maybe my favorite moment of the day, though, came as I watched the party sitting nearby of 10 or so Albanians, from toddlers to grandparents, as they worked their way through their own meal.

At one point, a server emerged from the kitchen carrying a cake with lit candles and set it before a young girl. And everyone at the table began to sing happy birthday (though the words were in Albanian, the tune was much the same).

The young girl burst into tears, and her mother – I assumed it was her mother – hugged her as everyone else applauded … not just the others at their table but the entire restaurant.

If I didn’t know better, I might have suspected Martin of setting the whole thing up just for us, it was that perfect of a moment.

Anyway, that feeling stayed with me as, later that afternoon, we continued our trek to Shkodēr … the second city stop on our Albanian adventure.

Next up: Rozafa Castle and Venetian masks.