Off to Poland!

Writing this from the departure lounge at Tirana Airport. It's only a two hour flight, so by the time most of you read this we will be in Warsaw, Poland.

Yesterday, we walked downtown and had lunch at the very first restaurant we went to when we arrived here almost three months ago.

It was a good meal, but not great. Ruth had the seafood risotto, and it wasn't as good as the one we had in Saranda almost two months ago. I had a local lamb casserole, and it was actually delicious, but there wasn't much of it and it should have been served with some vegetables. Still, we enjoyed a meal out on our last day in Albania.

I tried again to sort through the Covid rules for Poland. There is so much conflicting information. I have no problem with following the rules, but governments need to make sure various websites run by various departments actually agree with one another! And then, there was absolutely no way to communicate with LOT Airlines. Terrible customer service, and I found many recent complaints online regarding the same problem.

So we were up at 5am Friday morning. By 5:30am we were in the car, heading for the airport. Sunrise was at 5am, so it was nice and bright out already and of course hardly any traffic. We pulled into the airport parking at 6am.

Our LOT flight cost €126 ($185 CAD, $154 USD), per person one way from Tirana, Albania to Warsaw, Poland. Not bad, considering it included checked luggage.

The ticket as it was purchased said departure was at 9:40am, but when we arrived at the airport, the departure board said 9:20am. I never received any notifaction of a change.

But of course the check in wasn't open yet, and so we couldn't confirm about pre departure Covid testing. We felt as if we had no choice but to do the test, since by the time the check in desk opened, there wouldn't be enough time left to be sure we would get the test results back in time. So we went to the test center located at the airport and paid the €35 ($51 CAD, $43 USD) test fee per person. 

It was quick and efficient, and an hour and twenty minutes later we had our negative test results.

We went to check in, and they only questioned about whether or not Canadians were allowed into the EU through Poland. But the girl was quick to look up the rules and confirmed that we were good to go. Never asked about Covid at all.

So that money was totally wasted except that we now know that we will test negative when we have to do the required test as soon as we land in Poland. As we figured anyhow.

Next blog post from Poland!