Tirana, Albania

 We flew to Albania for Christmas!

It was a long day of travel from Amman, Jordan to Bergamo, Italy. We had a 6+ hour layover there on Christmas Eve and then landed at the Tirana airport just before midnight.

Albania is conveniently outside of the Schengen region and quite affordable. We had a 2 bdm AirBnb apartment to rest up in for the next week. 

 

Being away from friends and family in a different place was a challenge over the holidays, but we enjoyed being able to video call loved ones and open some small gifts. Santa put one small gift in each of the girls' stockings, and that was fun!

Local celebrations here are focused on New Year's Eve a bit more than Dec 25, but the Orthodox Chistmas celebrations pretty much run from Dec 24-Jan 7. 

It turns out there's a carnival in town so we spent Christmas afternoon and several other days enjoying bumper cars, air hockey, and riding rides! What a terrific surprise!

We enjoyed some walks and runs around the city, but also caught up on some work tasks / trip planning / and math for the kids. Jason got in some longer training runs with good elevation.

It was also lovely to get fresh bread at the bakery every day, buy our own groceries, and make our own food most of the time. We had some pizza and some crepes when we did go out for food. Oh, and some gelato, too!

There are bunkers everywhere in this city/country

crepes!

Our AirBnb:

our living room

Jason working at the desk

No shower curtain - a common thing we don't love

We went for a beautiful hike one day into the nearby mountains. We took the cable car up to the base, and then hiked to a peak from there.

After the hike, we were all hungry. The girls each took down a whole pizza.

Tirana has a big New Year's Eve celebration in the center not far from our apartment.In the afternoon, we went back for some more rides / bumper cars / air hockey. We played games in the evening as a family. Just before midnight, Rachel and Jason walked to the main square and enjoyed ALL the FIREWORKS. Wow. All 500,000 residents of this city launch their own all over the place, and then the city set off official ones on top of that at midnight. 

Ava and I stayed home and snuggled and listened from inside our blankets. Jason and Rachel took it all in and welcomed 2023.

We've now been away from our home for 6 months! 

We leave Albania and take the bus to Montenegro next.  Happy New Year to you!