ALBANIA 🇦🇱 TIRANA 🇦🇱 2024
CITY NUMBER 8️⃣....
What a really fun DAY OUT with tweedle dee and tweedle dumb 🤣 and the weather was on top form .. it was hot ☀️ can't believe I dressed for the cold 🤦♀️
Airport parking: 🚗 Booked through the JustPark app Novotel Hotel car park £17.49p for 20 hours (never parked here before and all went smoothly) Access instructions: On arrival at the Novotel Hotel,drive up to the barrier and collect a ticket from the ticket machine. Find a parking space. Once parked,go to the hotel reception with the ticket you collected from the ticket machine. The hotel reception will then provide you with a voucher for you to display in your car. Once you have placed the voucher on display in your car, go to the hotel entrance where the shuttle service to the airport terminal departs. The timings from the hotel are 3.00 hours and operate every half an hour until 00:30 hours to the airport terminal. Journey time is 5 minutes. On return to the hotel from the airport terminal,make your way to the bus/coach station Bay 18. The shuttle bus departs from Bay 18 from 03:15 hours and every half an hour until 00:45 hours.You pay the bus driver (cash and card payment accepted) £4 per person per journey and children under 16 years travel for FREE
Flights and Travel: ✈️
Return from Stansted X2 adults @ £25.98 each and X1 Teen @ £12.98 with Ryanair we only needed the under seat free bag and didn't have allocated seats so no extra cost!We ended up all seated 1 behind the other which was a result Total cost for flights £64.96p.
TIP: PRINT OFF YOUR RETURN BOARDING PASSES BEFORE YOU LEAVE AS TIRANA AIRPORT DOES NOT ACCEPT DIGITAL ONES ❌
Saturday 27th January:
Stansted 6.30am ➡️ Tirana 10.25am
Tirana 8.40pm ➡️ Stansted 10.45pm
Flight was ( 2hr 35mins), landed 30 mins early and passport control took about 20 mins then took a green taxis (these are the cheapest taxis as they are electric) from the airport to the cable cars ( Dajti Ekspres ) for €25 they accept cash or card, it took 50 mins to get there as traffic in the city was horrendous. The driver made it fun though as he was really friendly and was giving us information about the area,felt like a private tour 🇦🇱
In Albania they accept EURO or LEK currency. I used Euro the whole trip. BUT we did find that 90% of the museum's and food/drink stalls will only take cash. I feel it is very cheap here for the quality of the excursions and food & drink and the overral experience you get.
Places we Visited: 📄 Dajti Ekspres cable car: €14 each return. Tickets can only be purchased from the office on arrival.You are on the car about 15 mins and the views are absolutely amazing. We had a lovely picnic when we reached the top which was 1040 metres high. It does feel much higher and when you reach the top there is a cafe and lots of entertainment, horse riding, mini golf, kids adventure park. We took a lovely stroll around for about a hour before heading back down. We took our own food to have for lunch ( £11 aldis) so we could fit all our planned activities in for the day. We took our large water bottles and filled it up at the airport as I take a little flavoured juice squeezer to add to it throughout the day
We got the L11 blue bus back from the cable cars whuch you catch at the bottom of the road, to the old town square. This cost 40 LEK each or €1.50 for all 3 of us. National History Museum €4 each. CASH ONLY. Time spent 1hr 15 mins. If I'm honest I didn't know much about Albania before I arrived so we found this very interesting considering it covers very recent historic events aswell as ancient times. It is spread across 2 floors and it accessible. (I noticed the ramps everywhere.)
Bunkart2 museum €18 for 2 adults & 1 child: CASH ONLY! time spent 1 hr 30mins. We absolutely loved this place! The amount of history and information this bunker gives you is unreal.As your walking through the bunker and reading and seeing the events which happened it does give you the chills. The teens said they actually preferred this to the cable cars and was the highlight of their day! Highly recommend it for all ages.
Skanderbeg Square: Had all the museum's and mosques, clock tower and cafes surrounding it. Good photo opportunities.
Dinner 🍕
We found a place called Manna which is a 2 minute walk from the square and ordered a large pizza, chips Pepsi and large chicken burger chips and Pepsi and a red bull for a total of £14 and it was blooming delicious!!
Tirana centre back to the airport we took the coach for €4 euro each which you can catch without pre booking. There is 2 coaches and they both arrive together on the hour every hour and very well labelled as airport coach.
We have walked 15,000 steps (8 miles) today Minus the travelling We had 8.5 hours in Tirana to explore which I found was just right as everything was so close in proximity and found the people here very friendly and helpful
Extra cost: Glass of wine at spoons £6.05 Roaming data for the day: EE - £7.34 - travel pass add on 02- £6 travel inclusive bolt on
Everything in: Total cost of trip for all 3 of us was:
£253.05 = £84 each
Its now time to head home and to let my little legs recover AGAIN Roll on City number 9... on Wednesday 🌎
