On the road again!

We decided to hit the road again, so last Friday we took a bus to Skopje, Macedonia and rented a car for 10 days.  After picking up our little gray Fiat at a shopping mall near the bus station we headed west and ended up in Tetovo, a town of about 50,000 located on the edge of the Sar Mountains.  As the crow flies, Tetovo is only about 16 miles from Prizren, but it took us two bus rides and an hour long drive to get there due to the high mountains between the two towns.  I was quickly introduced to the horrors of driving in this part of the world, having to avoid pedestrians in the dark streets, double parked cars everywhere, narrow one-way streets and traffic circles that are basically just games of chicken.  But we survived and found a hotel for the night and a place to park, so all was good.  The next morning we did a little touring in Tetovo before heading to Ohrid Lake.

This is the "Painted Mosque" in Tetovo, originally built in 1438.  It is unusual for the painted floral designs on the facade.  It does have a minaret on the other side - you can barely see the base of it at the top corner of the roof in this photo.

We soon left Tetovo and headed south toward the old town of Ohrid.  On the winding 2 lane road to Ohrid we saw two things we had never seen before.  First was a big stork nest, complete with a large stork that refused to pose for a good picture.

I'm almost embarrassed about the second thing, which was being passed by an old Yugo.

We occasionally see a Yugo in Prizren, but there were herds of them in Macedonia, and it looks like most of them are still roadworthy.  This one was moving pretty well on the downhill sections of the road, but I eventually regained my manhood and passed it on a long uphill stretch of road.

This is another common sight on the back roads of Macedonia, along with a lot of tractors and other farm equipment, since they are starting to plow and plant their fields since warmer weather is finally upon us.  A couple days later on the way back to Kosovo we passed a cart being pulled by a horse in full gallop - it was a fun thing to see!

Our first stop at Ohrid Lake was in the town of Struga, where the water from the natural lake flows out to form a river.  The lake is huge, about 30 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide, and averages over 150 meters deep.  It is one of the oldest lakes in the world, estimated to have been formed by tectonic activity about 5 million years ago.  Due to its depth and the small amount of sediment flowing into it the water is extremely clear, and in Struga, where it flows into a man-made channel it has a beautiful blue color.

Annette had read about a traditional Macedonian restaurant in Struga, so we had to try it for lunch.  I had tavce gravce, beans baked in a clay pot, pretty much the national dish of Macedonia, and Annette ordered a stuffed pork dish.  After over a month in Kosovo it was nice to see pork on a menu again.  So, here is the food shot for this posting:

The pork roll was stuffed with cheese and mushrooms and other goodies and was quite tasty, as were my beans.  Some bread and a couple Skopsko beers completed a fine lunch.

Annette wanted to go to Macedonia over the Easter weekend so she could be in a predominantly Christian country, so here she is in front of the Roman Catholic church in Ohrid.  Although Ohrid was an important center of Roman Catholicism in the distant past, it is just starting to re-establish itself in Macedonia today.  This church complex appeared to be fairly new and the one Mass on Easter Sunday had no more than 50 people in attendance.  As you can see on this photo, it rained throughout much of our stay in Ohrid, but we were able to do some sightseeing during the breaks from the heavy rains.  We stayed 2 nights in a little apartment hosted by a cute older couple who greeted us with home-made brandy and juice and gave us some apples picked from their trees.  I had booked it on the internet and it was really hard to find, but at 22 euros a night it was a real bargain.

This is a view of Lake Ohrid.  The mountains to the left are in a Macedonian national park with peaks higher than 7000 feet.  The other side of the lake is in Albania.

We initially tried to get to the famous cliffside Church of St. John at Kaneo using the lakeside trail and boardwalk, but high water levels in the lake made that impossible.  However, we didn't discover that until after Annette had worked up the courage to walk across some parts of the boardwalk with major gaps between the wooden slats, so she got to do it twice!  But she was brave and did a good job!  We then had to take the land route up and down a few steep hills to get the this serene location.

The little Church of St. John at Kaneo is supposedly one of the most photographed buildings in the Balkans.  The land across the lake is part of Albania.

At the top of the hill is a newly built reconstruction of the Church of St. Clement, part of a large archeological site knows as Plaoshnik.  This was the site of a very early Christian basilica that has been partially excavated to show the detailed original mosaic floors and wall foundations.  It was also the site of one of the world's oldest universities, the Ohrid Literary School, founded by St. Clement in 886, which at one time had 3,500 students or disciples.  The school was dedicated to St. Paul, who preached in Ohrid in the 1st Century.

Part of the mosaic floor in the excavation of the old Christian basilica in the Plaoshnik.

This is a view up at Samuel's Fortress on the top of the hill in Ohrid.  We ran out of time to visit it due to the weather, but it surmounts the old walled city of Ohrid, which at one time had a 3 kilometer long protective wall surrounding it.  Portions of the wall and a few gates still exist, as shown below.

Ohrid is a town of about 50,000 population, but is a very popular summer vacation spot.  We were told there can be nearly that many tourists in town during July and August, so the town has many boutiques and shops on a large pedestrian-only street, shown in the photo below.  It would be nice to be there in warmer weather, but I don't know if I would like the crowds.  We enjoyed having the town pretty much to ourselves while we were there and we hope to make a return visit before we leave to explore the many places we missed this trip.

We returned to Prizren with the car, and are planning to do some more touring during her next 4 day weekend, which begins in less than 48 hours.  After walking around the narrow and confusing streets of Prizren for over 6 months is feels very strange to do some driving here.  I've decided I prefer going on foot a lot more than driving here, it is a whole lot less stressful.  That's it for now.