Lake Ohrid town

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I lie in today. I don’t sleep in because the hostel is noisy and about 930 they start hoovering and it goes on for a long time. Around 11 I get up, have a cold shower on my sunburn and head downstairs. There are a surprising number of people around. Emma from Australia and Essen from Finland are about to head for food so I join them. They want a view so I take them to where we were yesterday. We drink a few coffees and have a bagel and bacon. When I ask for mine without eggs he says they can do it but I won’t like it, weirdest response I’ve heard but at least it wasn’t a no. We sit chatting and eating for a while then we head for a wander around some of the churches. We end up naturally back at the hostel. Essen and I are going to walk the bus station to book our tickets to Tirana, there is only one a day and nobody wants to risk missing it. Emma leaves us to go and sit on the lake. The walk to the bus station for some reason takes so long and it’s really hot. He has a thing for old cars and there’s loads so we stop a bit. At the bus station we book our tickets and head back.

I stop at the Turkish bit tell Essen I’ll see him later as I want to explore here a bit. I wander through the old bazaar and pick up a hat for two euros to protect my head from anymore burning. I go to a few of the mosques and wander around for a bit before heading for sushi. I’ve been craving it since Friday but the sushi place is closed. Devastated. I get a crepe instead and head back. At the hostel I wait for Emma and we pick up a new girl Rachel from Toronto. Emma comes back with Essen and we head up to see the fortress with Rachel, Chim and Andrea from Italy. We walk up to the fortress but find it closed which is disappointing and bad info from the hostel. We carry on looking for the church of st John which is the famous picture of ohrid. We lose Andrea as he goes to get food but we find a monastery and walk round there for a bit then we ask and are directed to stairs we missed which lead down the hill to St John’s church. It is every bit as special as I imagined. A beautiful church against the back drop of the blue lake. We drink a beer and take hundreds of pictures. Andrea rejoins us with Jack. He says the others are up here but we can’t see where and we are at the best view point so were not moving. We stay to watch the sunset but at the last moment a cloud appears and covers it. Jack had found the others on a bench under the church so we head down to join them and there is around ten of them drinking a beer but they don’t have a view. Australian Alex wants to see the view we were at so she and I head back up. The others apparantly get told off by the church people for drinking so everyone comes to join us until the sun goes down.

As it is getting darker I head down with Sally, an English woman with night blindness so I help her down the stairs. At the bottom I want to dip my feet a bit and Chim stays with me, Sally leaves despite our protests to wait. I sit with my feet in the lake until the others come down to join us. Jack organises for us to go for food but then drives us all mad walking past loads of places trying to find a recommendation only to take us to somewhere so expensive. The people are so accommodating, moving tables but almost as soon as we sit down the decision is made to leave because its too expensive. I feel horrendous walking out like that, it’s so rude and when I realise I have left my water bottle I go back and take the chance to apologise. They are very gracious but I still feel shit. Most of the group, except Jack who supposedly stormed off, have waited for me so Essen leads us to a gyro takeaway place and to be honest its exactly what I needed. Back at the hostel we sit around talking and three guys from Skem join us so we talk about Liverpool a bit. At 11 we move inside and some of them head out. By 12 I am ready to call it a night, we have an early start and I don’t want to miss the bus but I’m going to really miss this hostel and Ohrid. It feels like a magical healing place and I feel much better for having come here.

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