A bit of Macedonian history in Bitola

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Today we have done a whistlestop tour through Macedonian history. We started off at the Roman ruins at Heraklea - this was a large town in its heyday, and only a small proportion has been excavated. However, there's an amphitheatre, religious buildings and some baths that you can wander around and some really impressively preserved mosaics. It would have been really quiet without a Japanese tour group there! Tickets, in contrast to the prices in our guidebook, we're just 100MKD per person, plus 300 for photos.



We then walked back to the town of Bitola - about 15 minutes away, via the station where we found out that there is indeed a train to Skopje, despite the appearance of the station from outside. Our plan is to take the train in a couple of days' time, rather than the bus.



Back in town, we stopped for lunch at a cafe on Sirok Sorok, the pedestrian street. Refreshed, we them went to the museum... It's another one to add to our list of bizarre museums that we've visited... It had a number of exhibits from different eras, including some rather interesting commentary on more recent history, and then a gallery devoted to Ataturk.



We then explored the centre of Bitola, including the Ottoman bazaar, passing a couple of mosques, an old clocktower and going into the Sv Dmitri church - it was built during Ottoman times, and was therefore boring-looking on the outside and really ornate inside. as it was such a hot day, we felt an ice cream was justified, and found some that were like mini Vienettas on a stick!

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