From Albania to Italy

Leaving Albania

We leave our apartment in Saranda at 7:00am and start our 3.5 hour drive to Tirana Airport.  We are travelling through the interior of Albania. The hilly mountains lined with olive trees make for a very pretty drive. Click here for a short video.

As we get closer to Tirana, the countryside flattens out. 

The Expensive Scratch

The car rental place finds a small scratch on our back bumper and charges us 330€. Hopefully insurance through our Visa card will cover it.

On to Italy

Our Ryanair flight to Bari, Italy takes 45 minutes. All the airports in Europe are using the new entry system requiring that you go through gates with your passport being scanned and  your photo (and sometimes fingerprints) taken. In Bari we all use a machine that takes our photo and prints. Then it’s on to another line with a gate that requires passport & face scan. We all get through except John who is rejected and must join another line of fellow rejectees. We go to get our luggage leaving John to his fate.  Half an hour later he is processed manually (the border officer looked at his passport photo page, no stamping, no scanning) and he rejoins us. We get our rental car. Lance is our driver in Italy.

We are exhausted by the time we reach our Airbnb apartment in Ugento around 9:00pm. Ugento is a small town in Puglia province in the heel of Italy. The reason for our visit is to attend the wedding of the son of close friends.