Today we climbed a mountain, explored some of the Ohrid area and ended up in Skopje for the night. One of the main highlights for the day was our amazing guide Ilina Arsova. She is wonderful! If you are going to Ohrid you should check out her hostel and if you need a guide you should look her up http://www.ilinaarsova.blogspot.com/
Breakfast at Villa Kale. Pretty good, but we had to delay our start time because they only serve breakfast from 8:30. Not going to complain though because for about $50/night this place was amazing
Ilina picked us up and the first thing we stopped at was the Bay of Bones. We didn't have time to visit a museum but this was a model village of what they thought it looked like during some of the first settlements
Fog was burning off the mountain when we started. We hiked in Galicica national park just outside of Ohrid. The place was very pretty and gave us great views. On the way there Ilina shared her views about the government plans for the park and area. Check out her blog for more info if you are interested in environmental issues
We reached the top (from the highest parking spot) in about 1.5 hours. The hike was reasonably hard but very pretty. We got a view of both lakes from the top
The only not so great thing about the hike were the crazy amount of flies and bees. It is hard to see in this picture but these guys were huge!
The hike had tons of wildflowers. Check the photo site for much more
View coming down
Dinky enjoying the view of Ohrid lake at a picture spot on the way down
After we came down we stopped at Sveti Naum monestary again. This is the springs that run into the lake. If we had more time we could have taken a little boat around
The monestary
Female peacock. I actually think she is pretty good looking. They were pretty loud again always sqwaking as tourists got too close
Lunch was is this little fishing village at a table over looking the lake on the way back to Ohrid (although not until 3 pm mostly because of our requests for stuff to do)
The meal included trout which was quite good, but I am not sure how they thought we could each eat 2 trout
Ilina parked the car in a secret spot. We returned to find the spot guarded by a lot of cows. This lady started charging me when I tried to get into the car, luckily we made it out of there
We had a very brief tour of Ohrid after that. This is the handmade paper place still hand prints paper on a Gutenberg press.
This is the inside of Saint Sophia church in Ohrid. The frescoes are ruined in some places, but they are quite old and they are working on fixing it up
Following of brief tour we said goodbye to Ilina and were driven to Skopje by the same company. On the way there we learned the driver had opposite views of the government compared to our Ohrid guide. He was in the military though so that might explain the opposite views
In Skopje we stayed in the apartment Urban Hostel. For $50/night you really couldn't do any better. The room was huge and had a Jacuzzi
We didn't really get in until after 9:30 so we opted for the neighborhood place down the street. It was ok (and cheap). Strangely they seem to have some sort of culture that says dipping the pizza in this strange almost ketchup like sauce is a good idea. I say it isn't that great, but at this point we were hungry, the food was cheap and edible.
After dinner we managed to make it up to our room, get our laundry sorted and get to bed. Tomorrow is our anniversary and we will be kayaking in a canyon.
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