Kuvatud on postitused sildiga Macedonia. Kuva kõik postitused
Kuvatud on postitused sildiga Macedonia. Kuva kõik postitused

kolmapäev, 28. september 2022

The Peaceful Pearl. Crossing bridges.

 












Loyal readers surely remember me writing about the rickety bridge we had to cross on the way to the winyard around a week ago. Well, it bothered Scott that we didn't even take a picture of this bridge, and today, driving from North Macedonia through Albania back to Montenegro, we decided to make a quick detour to the said bridge. The pictures and videos speak for themselves.

We made good time while driving and before reaching the border of Montenegro we started to discuss what if we canceled the accommodation in Montenegro and went through Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Dubrovnik in the same go. This idea seemed perfectly fine until we reached the border. There was total chaos at the border, and it took more time to cross it than all the previous ones combined. We decided to stay in Podgorica for the night afterall.

In the evening, we walked around in the capital - the only capital of this trip, we saw some awesome bridges and finally went back to the hotel.

teisipäev, 27. september 2022

The Peaceful Pearl. Tourists.

 













Today was yet another day when we didn't go hiking. We went to the old town, walked along those narrow streets and climbed many-many stairs. We looked at all the terraces full of flowers. And we walked up to the cafe by the fort. We sat there on the patio drinking cappuccinos with whipped cream and hot chocolate with whipped cream and watched the rain go over the lake. When the rain stopped, we walked to the market, bought two kilos of plums and went to lunch.

Since we were once again not very impressed with lunch, we also visited a shop and a bakery later. In the latter, the aunty behind the counter put our cherry cake aside so skillfully that we didn't realize it was missing until we got home.


esmaspäev, 26. september 2022

The Peaceful Pearl. How come we didn't go hiking.













I don't know why, but I had wanted to come to Lake Ohrid for awhile now. It looked so beautiful with its surrounding mountains. What I didn't count on was the town of Ohrid - it's a wonderfully cute little old town on the side of a mountain. Part Ottoman again, with narrow streets, lush gardens and beautiful views.

But let's start from the beginning. When I went to sleep last night, it turned out that instead of a pillow, there was a brick about half a meter high in the bed. Since I can't sleep without a pillow, I still gave this brick a try. A few hours later I gave up, but by then I already had a headache. I turned my softest clothes into a pillow and slept with semi-success until seven o'clock. Well, like during my backpacking days at the Kuala Lumpur airport, where I slept on the floor, with my head either on a backpack or a pile of clothes. In any case, I wrote a nice letter to the apartment owner and asked for pillows instead of bricks. At 10 in the morning, new pillows were available.

We went to the hotel restaurant next to the apartment building for breakfast. Once we had finished our eggs and were ready to ask for the bill, two cakes trileche arrived on the table - with greetings from our apartment owner. These cakes were significantly better than what we ate in Montenegro.

We had planned to go hiking in the nearby nature park, but since I wasn't feeling very well after such a night, we went to the city instead - we walked in the old town, went to see the church, took pictures of geckos and finally walked back home.

I went for a run, finally a coastline, where I could run along the beach just as far as I needed. The views are so beautiful. About a kilometer before the end, a light sprinkle started and it made me walk instead of run over the last bridge, because the pavement was so slippery even when not wet. Of course, that didn't stop me from falling on my butt. At least it didn't happen on higher speed.

When we went for dinner, I discovered a DM advertisement on the street and of course I had to go there. We thought it would take about 30 minutes on foot, but since it started to rain, we still went by car. Good decision, because 20 out of 30 minutes we would have walked in pitch dark ghetto. How this DM opened its shop in such a location probably remains a mystery. A year's supply of cosmetics is now stocked again.

We had parked the car in the back corner of the parking lot, because there weren't many slots available. When we came out of the store, one of the local douchebags had parked his car exactly in front of ours. We could have rolled our car out of our slot on its side - this was the width available. There was a woman in the next car who would have had enough space to get out, but she was probably not a very confident driver, so she called her brother to reverse her out of there. The brother arrived, spread his arms that "Macedonia..." and drove his sister's car out of the parking space. At the same time, the driver of the car that had parked us in came out, got into the car and started driving away. However, the woman's brother was a cop, walked up to the window, showed him his document and told him to turn into an empty parking space. The last thing we saw as we drove away was the douchebag opening the car's back for the cop.


pühapäev, 25. september 2022

The peaceful Pearl. From the sea to the lake.

 

 



At 9:31 in the morning we left the hotel in Albania and at 15:00 we turned into our street in North Macedonia.

We had bought a watermelon on the way still in Albania. And at the border crossing we learned that there is no queue for those crossing the border on foot, and they can walk straight past the cars and to the counter as they see fit. Even if there is only one passenger in the car. Otherwise, the drive was rather uneventful.

We ate pizza, chicken fillet and spaghetti in creamy sauce (they called it Carbonara for some inexplicable reason) and then went for a walk by the lake. We watched the sun set behind the mountains of Albania, went grocery shopping and returned to our apartment. I ate half of the watermelon I bought on the side of the road (it's the most delicious one), I drank two glasses of the tea that the auntie in Montenegro brought me, and now I'm considering whether all of that was a good idea at nine o'clock in the evening.