Exit45 Travels - Nomadic Retirement Travel

28/09/2026

📸 Monday Memories #11

Shame... Shame... Shame! 🔔

Dubrovnik, Croatia • October 2025

If you're a Game of Thrones fan, you'll recognise these steps immediately.

Walking the famous "Shame Stairs" was much more enjoyable than Cersei's experience... thankfully no one was ringing a bell behind us! 😂

👉 Have you ever visited a movie or TV filming location?

27/09/2026

WEEK 1 [of 4 weeks] – First Impressions of Tirana, Albania

TIRANA, ALBANIA – OUR HOME FOR THE NEXT 4 WEEKS!

A new country, a new apartment and another month of slow travel!

We've arrived in Tirana, Albania's colourful and energetic capital, where we'll be settling in for the next four weeks.
For anyone unfamiliar with Albania, it's a small country in the Balkans, bordered by Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Greece, with a beautiful coastline along the Adriatic and Ionian Seas.

Tirana is known for its colourful buildings, fascinating communist-era history, lively café culture and a growing reputation as an affordable European destination.

A FEW INTERESTING FACTS::

🇦🇱 Albania has thousands of concrete bunkers scattered across the country, a legacy of its communist past.

☕ Coffee culture is HUGE here. Cafés are everywhere, and sitting down for a coffee seems to be a favourite local pastime.

🎨 Many of Tirana's once-grey buildings were painted in bright colours as part of an effort to transform the city.

OUR FIRST IMPRESSSIONS?

☀️ The weather has been perfect! We've been enjoying temperatures averaging around 25°C each day – ideal for walking and exploring the city.

🏗️ Tirana is a city undergoing significant change. There's new construction everywhere, alongside older, crumbling buildings that look like they may eventually make way for more modern apartment developments.

🛒 Grocery shopping is a bit of a treasure hunt! Finding good-quality produce and the ingredients we want means visiting several different shops. We've now found our regular butcher, local bakery, cheese and olive shop, fruit and veg vendor, and a grocery store stocking more international products. It's taken a little effort, but we're slowly getting our shopping routine sorted.

😊 The locals have been a little reserved. We haven't found people particularly friendly initially, but as we return to the same shops and cafés, we're starting to see more smiles and even the occasional friendly greeting. Perhaps we're slowly becoming familiar faces!

💰 Our biggest surprise? The cost of living! We'd read and watched so many blogs and vlogs describing Albania as one of Europe's cheapest countries. However, the cost of groceries and eating out has been considerably higher than we expected. So far, Tirana isn't proving to be quite the budget-friendly destination we'd anticipated!

We've still got plenty of exploring (and eating!) ahead of us, so it'll be interesting to see whether our first impressions change as we settle into everyday life here.

We've based ourselves right in the centre of town on Rruga Myslym-Shyri, where we're looking forward to exploring more of the city on foot, discovering local restaurants and markets, and finding out what everyday life in Albania is really like.

We found a great airy apartment on booking dot com and got a 60% discount when we booked for 30 nights (another bonus for slow travel). It has everything we need including a full kitchen and washing machine.

That's one of the things we love about slow travel. Rather than rushing between attractions, we get to settle in, establish a routine and experience a little more of local life.

❓ HAVE YOU VISITED TIRANA? Did you find it as affordable as everyone says, or were you surprised by the prices too?
We'd love to hear your experiences!

If you've been to Tirana, we'd love your recommendations!

📍 Tirana, Albania | September – October 2026

N.B. Facebook has made changes and we don't seem to be able to write a description under the photos anymore. Sorry, but we are seeing if there is any way to fix this :)

27/09/2026

Crazy cruise deal! If anyone can act on short notice, it leaves in 2 days. U$12/day to cruise the Pacific. It's on Norwegian Gem. I have never seen anything this cheap. Have you?

26/09/2026

😂 When Your Travel Plans Go Pear-Shaped… Ask ChatGPT!

I honestly don't know how I would have navigated our Air Serbia saga without ChatGPT.

And that's not something I expected to say a few years ago. 😂

After our delayed Air Serbia flight caused us to miss our connection, spend three unexpected nights in Belgrade and wait around three days for our luggage, the actual travel drama eventually ended.

Then came...

THE CLAIMS 😩

Airline claims.
Travel insurance.
Delayed baggage.
Extra transport costs.
Unused accommodation.
Receipts.
Forms.
Policy documents.

And the inevitable question:

"Can we actually claim this?"

This is where ChatGPT has been an absolute godsend.

Instead of me trying to decipher pages and pages of insurance wording, I've been able to upload our policy documents, booking confirmations, receipts and screenshots and ask questions about our specific situation.

We've worked through what expenses may fall under which parts of our insurance, what evidence we need, what should potentially be claimed from Air Serbia first, and what information needs to be included in the claims.

And when the online claim system started throwing error messages at me?

Yep. ChatGPT helped me troubleshoot that too. 😂

What I love most is being able to ask:

"Okay, THIS is what the form is asking me. What do I put here?"
..and work through it one step at a time.

For travellers, particularly those of us who didn't grow up with AI, I think this is one of the most useful ways to use ChatGPT.

Not to plan your entire life for you.

But to help you understand complicated information, organise your paperwork and know which questions you should be asking.

Of course, I still check important information against the airline, insurer and official documents. AI isn't infallible.

But as my very patient assistant through this particular travel nightmare?

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Would use again.

Preferably WITHOUT the three-day delay next time. 😂

Have you started using ChatGPT when you travel? If so, what's the most useful thing you've used it for? 👇

26/09/2026

25/09/2026

⚠️ A WARNING FOR FELLOW TRAVELLERS: KEEP. EVERY. RECEIPT.

Our recent trip with Air Serbia turned into one of those travel days you really don't want to repeat.

We were flying Stockholm → Belgrade → Ohrid when our first flight was delayed, causing us to miss our connection.

And that was just the beginning...

Instead of arriving in Ohrid as planned, we ended up stranded in Belgrade for three nights.

Our checked luggage didn't arrive with us either. We were told it had been left behind in Stockholm.

Then came the fun part. 😩

We were told by an Air Serbian staff member to return to Belgrade Airport the following day because our bags were expected to arrive. We spent around four hours at the airport... only to discover they weren't there and at no point were they expected to be.

The next day, transport that Air Serbia had arranged to collect us from our hotel didn't turn up, so we had to organise our own taxi to the airport.

Meanwhile, we had no luggage, so we had to buy basic clothes and toiletries to get us through.

Our bags finally made it to Ohrid three days later on the same flight we were on.

To Air Serbia's credit, they did provide us with accommodation and meals while we were stranded in Belgrade. But trying to get information about the delay, return transport (which never arrived) to the airport for our flight, locate our luggage and work out what we could claim afterwards has been another story entirely.

We're now working through claims with both Air Serbia (haven't heard anything back from them for more than 1 week now) and our travel insurer (still ploughing through this one).

💡 The big lesson from all of this?

If something goes wrong with a flight:

👉 Keep EVERY receipt — even for small purchases
👉 Take screenshots of flight changes and messages
👉 Keep boarding passes and booking confirmations
👉 Record names, dates and times when you speak to airline staff
👉 Get a baggage report / PIR if your luggage is delayed
👉 Keep records of extra accommodation and transport costs
👉 Don't assume the airline will tell you (honestly) what you're entitled to claim

We've travelled full-time for the past 9 years and still learned a few things from this one.

Travel doesn't always go according to plan, but good records / photographic documentation can make a HUGE difference when you have to fight your way through the claims process afterwards.

Have you ever had a flight delay or lost luggage turn into a travel nightmare? What happened, and did the airline actually compensate you? 👇

📸 THE STORY IN PHOTOS:

1️⃣ The delay begins… Stockholm Airport and our 20:30 flight to Belgrade was already showing an estimated departure of 22:07. Little did we know what was coming.

2️⃣ Hello Belgrade. Goodbye luggage. 😩 The baggage carousel eventually stopped... but our two bags never appeared.

3️⃣ Back at Belgrade Airport the next day. We were told our bags would arrive from Stockholm. Four hours of waiting and searching later — no bags.

4️⃣ Our unexpected Belgrade home: Hotel Srbija. Air Serbia provided our accommodation and meals while we waited for another flight to Ohrid.

5️⃣ The only drinking water was from the tap after arriving at 3:30am. The hotel reception staff swore it was drinkable water....

6️⃣ Three nights here instead of Ohrid. Not quite the accommodation we'd planned for this part of the trip!

7️⃣ REUNITED! 🎉 Our bags finally arrived in Ohrid around three days after we last saw them in Stockholm. Never have we been so happy to see two battered Deuter bags!

22/09/2026

✈️ Travel Tip Tuesday: Compression Bags Can Be a Packing Game-Changer

When you're travelling long-term, getting everything back into your suitcase can occasionally feel like an advanced-level puzzle. 😂

Compression bags can help by squeezing the air out of bulky soft items such as jackets, jumpers and other clothing. We use ours for our pillows!

We prefer the roll-up travel versions that don't require a vacuum, which makes them much more practical when you're moving from place to place.

But there's one catch...

They create more space, not more baggage allowance.

It's surprisingly easy to compress everything beautifully and then discover your suitcase weighs a tonne. 😬

👉 Do you use compression bags or are you a packing-cube person? We are both!

21/09/2026

📸 Monday Memories #10

When Your Hotel Owner Races Speedboats... 🏁🚤

Panama City, Panama • 2017

Our hotel owner was competing in the World Speed Boat Championships, so naturally we joined his staff and friends to cheer him on.

Definitely not something we'd expected when we checked into the hotel!

❤️ It's these completely unplanned travel experiences that often make the best memories.

18/09/2026

After 5 great days here in Ohrid, North Macedonia we are moving on. The weather has been fantastic for exploring the areas with sunny 22-25 degree days. Tomorrow we're heading to Tirana, Albania. We have really enjoyed our stay here in the old town with our friendly host Zharko at Villa Dudinka. "Vi blagodaram", Ohrid.