Discover essential travel tips for families visiting Albania, including currency advice, driving tips, and local dining insights.
1. The Albanian Lek is a closed currency
While it’s true that the Albanian Lek is not available outside of Albania, don’t worry—it won’t be a problem during your travels. Once you arrive, you can easily exchange your currency at the airport or at local exchange offices. Plus, the Euro is widely accepted in many places, so you’ll have plenty of options. Whether you choose to use Lek or Euros, you can rest assured that you won’t encounter any difficulties, and you’ll be able to enjoy your trip without any currency-related concerns.
2. Cash is essential
While we use cards and phones to pay for everything here, in Albania, cash is king. In some places, even petrol is cash only and in most places we ate, we could only pay with cash. I’m sure this is changing and there were some bigger shops where we could use our cards, it’s a good idea to have some currency on you at all times.
3. Driving in Albania
Car hire is the way to go if you want to travel around
4. Petrol, however, is expensive
You will pay similar, if not more, than we do in the UK for petrol
5. Driving is busy in towns and cities but fine elsewhere
You may have heard that driving in Albania is dangerous and it’s true that it can feel quite hectic at times but once you leave the main towns and cities it is hassle free.
6. Cashpoints charges are high
You will pay a lot to take money out of cashpoints in Albania. If you have to, though, never ever accept the exchange rate the bank is offering you. Just press ‘no’ when offered this option and you will save a fortune. This goes for everywhere, not just Albania, but we did find the difference particularly high here.
7. The vegetarian scene is limited
We have vegetarians in our family and I would say that the options available for vegetarians are very limited. I ate suflaqe
Kitchen Family Travels 