After I declined around fifteen offers of taxis walking through the airport terminal, I found the clearly signed airport buses operated by Luna at the rear of the taxi area and these operate every hour to the city centre. They cost €4 which seems reasonable and they take cards and cash, although more on that in a moment. I realised that my hotel was around an hour walk from the city centre, but by good fortune there was a bus stop on the route which was located very near to my hotel. I asked twice about stopping here and the ticket person confirmed both times that it would stop there, although I think he thought that I was an idiot for double checking this. Fair point though. I then discovered that my PayPal card didn’t work, so I used the remaining coins that I had to pay the €4 fare, which I deliberately had kept just in case of a situation like this. That is now my emergency supply used up, as I spent the rest on an emergency Fanta in the extreme heat of Faro the other day.
Anyway, a driver got on and the bus trundled along and I knew – just knew – that when we got near my stop, it was going to sail straight past. There technically aren’t any stops en route, but they will stop on request but there’s no bell and they’re not stopping unless they need to. As we approached the stop, which is near the city’s coach station, another passenger started to make some noises about stopping but as it was in Albanian I had no idea what was being said. I decided to ask the lady next to me, who I had already established was Albanian and spoke English, if she knew whether the bus was stopping. She didn’t, but she had some conversation with the driver and she said that my stop was further away.
The bus then stopped for the other two passengers who wanted to get out and I was delighted to see the Mercure hotel only a thirty second walk away, but the driver tried to stop me getting off saying that it wasn’t my stop. I confirmed that it was and he said that it wasn’t the city centre. I did think that was fairly obvious, but I decided to force the issue as otherwise I would be walking for an hour to get back to where I was. The driver kept telling me that it wasn’t the city centre, but I got off quickly before I was bundled back in. Fortunately, I was at the hotel within one minute…. I was going to take a photo of the bus for this blog post, but I thought that I’d rush away quickly.
I’ve purchased my return ticket online for tomorrow, so hopefully nothing will go wrong. I will add that the team members were doing their best and I appreciated the driver not wanting me to be stranded near the coach station on the outskirts, even though that’s where I wanted to be stranded. I was fortunate that two other passengers wanted to get out at the stop, otherwise I might have had quite a walk back.