1.9.22
Yayyy, time to go to Albania!!
Have been looking forward to this so much. It’s been on the list for so long.
We booked in June, feels like ages ago. Flights from Istanbul were just €100 each, return.

Everything went smoothly at Dalaman and Istanbul airports. I was nervous about travelling with my cpap, sleep apnoea machine, and apart from 1 lady lobbing it on the conveyor sideways and a glance at the Dr’s paperwork from check in there was no issue about taking it on as extra hand luggage and no one checked whether it met EEA 2million and eleventy five regulations or not.

I popped into a chemist in Istanbul airport to ask if they sold green cross stickers to put on my medical bag.
What’s a green cross he asked, come with me I said and pointed to the large illuminated green cross outside.
No, he said, that’s not for sale.
😂😂
No, not an electric one, one to put on the bag to stop security staff lobbing it about.
Why didn’t you check it in he said.

Errrrmm.. because I don’t want it to get back to me in the form of a mosaic I thought. Never mind.

Our Air Albania flight was rescheduled a few days ago to an hour later, so we did have nearly 5 hours to kill.
Most of it was spent playing spot the HSBC ATM to draw out my carefully transferred sterling to change when we arrive in Albania… There isn’t one.
I knew I should have got up early and popped into town to get it this morning.
We’ll work something out, thankfully we already have a few euros.

The flight left on time, possibly the noisiest ever, everyone seemed to know each other and had lots to say, but all very good humoured. Lots of Haribo and mints being passed around.

We were shocked to get a bottle of water and a meal. Well, I say meal, a cheese square in a roll, some lettuce and sweetcorn, a cube of cake and some very nice fruit juice.
I’d have settled for a coffee, but it’s the thought that counts.

I’d made coronation chicken rolls which we scoffed not long before boarding. They were very good.

I’ve been lugging around a kilo of apples all day that John’s moaned about all week because I’ve not eaten them.
I did eat one this morning.
I’ve also lugged 2 large packets of crisps, grapes, plums, 3 packs of biscuits and a bag of nuts.
Uneaten.
No idea why I go into full blown survival mode when we go to an airport.

Almost as soon as we’d eaten our ‘meal’ we began descending.
Albania is an hour behind Turkey, so we took off at 8.30pm and landed at 8.30pm.
I’ve already learned my first phrase,written on the meal box, but no idea how to pronounce it.

Ju bëftë mirë

At any given time someone was either crying, kids that is, sneezing or coughing.
I wonder if it was always like this pre covid but we only noticed the grizzling?
You feel like you’re just one sneeze away from the dreaded lurgy. Will we ever get over these thoughts?

We landed with a fair old bump and the very noisy scuffle to get off started. The lady next to me kept looking and smiling. She was desperate to make friends, but held back by the language barrier.
As I only knew the equivalent of bon apetit I simply smiled back.

Tirana airport is small and the wait for the bags was big.
Meanwhile I went off to the vodaphone shop and got a tourist sim card.
The equivalent of around £15 for 35 GB.
After getting the poor guy to open the sim slot, asking a young girl to read the pin code on the card for me (note to self, get new eye test before ordering next batch of contact lenses) asking the guy again to help me as it wasn’t accepting it, having my Turkish sim removed and sellotaped to back of the newly bought sim holder, a bit of eye rolling and tutting at the poor old incompetent biddy with failing eye sight and we were good to go.
I commented in a very mum like way that he looks exhausted and needs to go home and he showed me the hugest pile of sim forms from today. He even cracked a smile.

I’d browsed facebook, checked Twitter, emails, taxi apps and almost solved world debt crises by the time John arrived looking stressed.
But yayyy we have 2 bags. Now we needed a taxi.
We were offered one for €25, we declined. I was going through my variety of uber style apps, no one was in the vicinity or accepting the booking.
Matey came back with a new offer of €20. We declined.

By now we were only 15 minutes away from getting the 10pm Luna airport shuttle bus so we made our way across to the minibus, in the rain!
We stumbled about getting into the pitch dark bus where a few other passengers were already onboard.
At 5 minutes to 10 we all faffed around with phone torches finding payment. It’s just 400 lek each, or €4 euros. We don’t have lek as yet, but given the exaggerated exchange rate and no change we shall get some asap if this is, as we suspect, the norm.
The bright interior lights came on as he turned the ignition, and off we went to the end point by Skandenbeg Square, arriving 30 minutes later.

There were 2 taxis across the road, one said vip, so we went for the Brett class one in front of it.
We showed him the map to Bledis apartment on New Boulevard, Rruga Gjon Mili, 8 minutes drive away.
He had the phone almost to his nose. Ok. 5 euros.
He couldn’t read the map and drive, so we directed him, to a dead end!
After attempting a 25 point turn, he reversed back and phoned the guy waiting for us at the apartment.
3 attempts at entering the phone number later and a lot of discussion followed by a lot of acceleration to let us know he was annoyed, 2 more phone calls, finally following the guy on his push bike and we pulled up outside.
I gave him 6 euros but he wanted an extra euro, we said no and so did the apartment guy, who firmly but quietly sent him on his way.

The moral of this story…pay an extra fiver and let the airport taxi take you, or remember the drama of your first row in a new country and cherish that memory forever.

The apartment is lovely, dated, but impeccably clean and spacious.
All we wanted to do was sleep.

The man over the road with his weird music had other ideas, as did the barking dog the other side.
Just dozed off and at midnight there were loads of fireworks.

I googled in case it was a special date, no.
20 minutes later more fireworks.
Then total silence.

Albania I already love you, the noisy chaos, the cyclists going towards oncoming traffic, people trying to make an extra couple of pence, the tatty unkempt looking streets mixed with modern coffee shops, bars and businesses of all types.

As I type I can even hear a cockerel. It feels all very familiar…