After spending the last couple of evenings in Skopje, we opted to spend the whole day here today rather than heading to Pristina, as had been our original plan. We walked around the old bazaar area, including the Bit Pazar, a large market where you could buy almost anything you wanted. Having avoided buying anything (although nobody was pushy), we walked up to the Mustafa Pasha mosque and had a look inside. From there, we went to the Kale fortress - it had looked permanently closed the other night, but part of it was open, and we walked along a section of the walls for good views over the city centre. After eating spinach and cheese burek for lunch, we caught a bus (#19) to Suto Orizari, a predominantly Roma area of the city recommended by ... read more

After a short walk along the river in Dihovo, we got a taxi to the station in Bitola. We bought our 314MKD (~£4) tickets to Skopje, with the train waiting in the platform an hour early. There are a lot of train tracks, some heading in the direction of Greece before disappearing into grass... The railways here have clearly seen better days, but the train had comfortable seats, and windows that opened. After shopping for some snacks in a little shop by the station, we got on. We thought it might be quiet, but it filled up a lot before we left, on time. It was the only train from Bitola at a sensible time, with just 4 trains per day to Skopje (there are a lot more buses, but we thought the train would be ... read more

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, ... read more

I'm writing this from our balcony, overlooking the lake, with a nice glass of Macedonian rose. Or 'roze' in Macedonian. It's really very pleasant. It's a good job the pronunciation of Ohrid isn't something like the English 'horrid', because it'd be a terrible description (it's more like 'ohkrid' if you were wondering). If you're trying to locate the place on a map, don't use Apple maps as the entire lake seemingly doesn't exist... Last night we ate dinner by the lake, trying Macedonian meze, including ajvar, made from red peppers, and a local trout dish. The meal was delicious, and the cuvée wine we tried really very nice, with a beautiful view out over the lake and to the floodlit little church above us. After dinner we strolled back, and found ourselves watching the last night ... read more

After a long day of travelling, involving a very slow train, an enormous queue at Luton airport and then an unexplained delay to our flight, we made it to Ohrid airport. On the approach, we flew over the lake, getting a great view of the town of Ohrid. After finding that the only ATM at the airport didn't work (you can't buy Macedonian currency abroad) we managed to get into town by paying twice the usual bus fare in euros! We located our room, and were shown all its features by a nice elderly man who had waited past the usual check in time for us to arrive. There's a balcony with a lake view, although it was dark by the time we got here, so it'll be a nice surprise to see over the lake ... read more