If you read my previous post We’ve Booked Our Holiday to Albania you noticed we were pretty excited to go and I’m writing this story from my desk, already home for a good week sadly, still reminiscing about what a great week we had. Let me tell you about it.
Table of contents
Open Table of contents
Packing up, shacking up
Solving our first mistake
We booked through Rover so that our Bogdan could stay with the dog sitter from the 22nd to the 29th, only to realise we were flying that same day. Luckily, Michelle was kind enough to take him the night before…
Solving our second mistake
I’ve always travelled light, just a small backpack, so I didn’t book any checked luggage. Now I’m with Luba; she managed to fit all her things, but I worried it would be too big. And yes, it was. At the airport we shuffled a few things between bags and it all worked out. Next time? We’ll bring two trolleys…
Around 19:00 we dropped Bogdan at Michelle’s place, went home, watched half an hour of a movie, and turned in early.
First day of our holiday
Our flight to Tirana was at 18:10 so you might think this would be a boring day but nope, we were excited so we drove by car to Luba’s work, parked the car there and took the tram to The Hague Central Station. I already bought train tickets online so at the station we got some coffee, drinks and some sandwiches and boarded the train to Schiphol Airport and arrived there around 13:45.
As we already were checked in online we had some time to spend. Walked around, bought some candy and magazines, drank some coffee and around 16:15 we went to the gate.
Right on time at 18:10 we took off, and it finally felt like our holiday had truly begun.
At Tirana
We landed at 20:10 on Tirana Airport. Florian gave me the number of Ritvan, the guy who was going to drive us to Florian’s Guesthouse. When we came out, Ritvan was nowhere to be found. So, I turned on mobile data on my phone and texted him. Btw: never do that in a country that is not part of the EU. Within minutes I got an SMS that I had already spent around 40 euro… Anyway. Luba got a little nervous, went inside the airport hall and managed to find some paper and wrote our names on it and on the other side Ritvan’s name. In the meantime I stayed outside and after some minutes Ritvan tapped me on the shoulder and asked: “Are you going to Florian’s Guesthouse?”
Turned out traffic was busy and he had some issues parking his car, but after a short walk in the warm Albanian air, we got to his car, got some drinks for along the way and started our drive to Florian.
Ritvan turned out to be an incredibly nice guy and boy he was talking a lot; later in the week we would meet him again when he was our guide for an excursion in the mountains. He told us a lot about the history of Albania, how communism affected life and how people are getting by nowadays.
The drive wasn’t that long, around 2.5 hours so at 22:45 we were finally at Florian’s Guesthouse! Florian gave us a warm welcome and as promised, because it was quite late in the evening, they prepared some food for us and my God, that tasted like we never tasted food before.
While we were eating this delicious food we talked with Florian and because I have been talking with him on WhatsApp for over a year it felt like (finally) meeting an old friend. When we were full he showed us our room, we quickly settled in and fell asleep.
Our true first day in Albania
We, well I woke up around 06:50 and our friend Florian was also awake and he asked me to go with him to the city to have a coffee and also go to the atm. Although the traffic is a little bit chaotic, riding on the bike in Shkoker is fun and the cars are used to the many bikes in the city.