How do you get to Albania and move around: ferries from Italy, the airport, buses?

Three companies cross from Bari to Durrës: Adria Ferries (daily, about 8 hours, night departure at 22:00 or 23:00 in high season), Ventouris (night sailing 22:00-08:00 all season, more in July and August) and GNV (10 h 45 min, from EUR 48). Adria Ferries also sails Ancona-Durrës, three nights a week off season and daily from July to mid-September; Star Lines runs Brindisi-Vlorë but publishes no fares online. Book a cabin if you travel with children or arrive to sign a contract the next morning; the deck fare is a reclining seat or your own sleeping bag.

All Italian fares exclude port fees, which Ventouris lists as EUR 15 port tax plus EUR 8 environmental charge per passenger and per vehicle and Adria as EUR 15 per passenger and EUR 20 per car. Adria had not published a 2026 price list when this page was written; its 2025 list is shown. Italian paper identity cards are no longer accepted on these routes.

Tirana International Airport (Rinas) is 17 km from the city. The airport bus to the centre stops behind the Opera on Skanderbeg Square, runs every full hour day and night and costs 400 lek; a second bus goes to the South and North bus terminal for 300 lek, and a direct bus to Durrës costs 600 lek with nine departures a day. The official airport taxi quotes about 2,200 lek to the centre and fixed fares to the coast. Vlora airport was certified in 2025 but had not opened by October 2026: the government began terminating the concession in August 2026, so fly to Tirana or Corfu for the south.

Intercity buses leave Tirana from the South and North terminal near the Casa Italia overpass: to Durrës about every 20-30 minutes from 06:00 to 21:15, to Vlorë about every 30 minutes from 05:00 to 17:30, to Shkodër from 05:00 to 18:00. International and south-eastern lines use the terminal on the Tirana-Elbasan motorway. Fares are regulated by distance and include VAT; tickets are bought from the driver or at the terminal. The Tirana-Durrës railway is being rebuilt and is not running. In Tirana a city bus ride costs 40 lek and a monthly pass for all lines 1,600 lek.

Fuel prices are capped by the state's Transparency Board and change several times a week; on 14 October 2026 the caps were 213 lek a litre for diesel and 190 lek for petrol, about EUR 2.31 and 2.06. A foreign or international driving licence is valid until you have been resident for a year; after that it has to be exchanged for an Albanian one at DPSHTRR, which is done without a test for EU, US, Canadian and many other licences for about 8,500 lek in fees. Flats near the sea in Durrës, Vlorë and Shëngjin are listed with or without a parking space; in the summer months a space is worth paying for.