Tirana in €30s-€70s rtn

You know that famous travel quote "it's not the destination, it's the journey"? Weeeell...

Let me tell you about a little taxi ride that 4 of the JFC Flight Finders took last year in Albania. After having a blast remote working, pyramid racing and dive bar dancing for the past few days in Tirana, we were all ready to head down south and dive into the Maldives of Europe.  

That is, until our Taxi driver asked “do you want the short route, or the longer scenic route?”.  The morning heat blazed down, but despite our exhaustion and travel nausea concerns, a decision was made.

We hit the dusty road, our driver lit up a cigarette and began chatting away. Between shared roadside corn snacks and profound discussions of Albanian culture, I barely noticed the car crawling to a halt near the side of a spectacular valley.

After a few pictures snapped and ice creams eaten, we continued on. Our next stop, a wide stretch of shallow, fast flowing water with picnicking families dotted along the pebbled riverbanks. "You wanna swim?" our driver chuckled. Of course, we wanted to swim!

Time slipped away as we frolicked in the cool currents, slipping on mossy rocks and playing like children. By now, we needed to chase the setting sun to our third stop, Gjirokastër Castle. Clearly a favourite site of our driver, he enthusiastically toured us around, translating all the Albanian info signs we passed.

Finally, as the skies were ablaze with peachy pink hues, we pulled into our penultimate stop. We stood near the edge of a rocky cliff and looked out over the water to see the silhouette of Corfu — who knew it was so close!

As darkness fell, we trundled into the car park of our Ksamil accommodation. Muscles achy, slightly sunburnt, but extremely content we took the long road :-)