What I learned about money in Albania

I arrived in Albania thinking that, since it's not a eurozone country, changing money would be the trip's first real headache. I was pretty wrong, and here's what I learned about money along the way, mostly by trial and error.

The first thing we discovered: the euro is accepted almost everywhere, no problem. In Tirana, Sarande and Ksamil we paid in euros most of the time, and change came back in either euros or Lek depending on the place and whichever suited them better.

Even so, carrying some Lek in cash avoids more than one dumb inconvenience. Tuk-tuks, local markets and the odd small beach stall only take the local currency, and there isn't always an ATM nearby when you actually need one.

The most expensive lesson we almost learned: car insurance. We booked with zero excess from the start, convinced that settled it, and even so at the counter they insisted on offering us "the good insurance" — having the policy printed out shut the conversation down, but we almost didn't bring it.

The budget in Albania is easy to control if you avoid the two classic traps: paying for car insurance twice, and not carrying any cash for the islands. Everything else pretty much sorts itself out.

We also learned, as the days went on, that every beach club in Ksamil has its own pricing system, quite different from one to the next — it's worth checking which one fits what you're after that particular day, instead of picking the first one you find as soon as you reach the beach.