We stopped in the capital of Macedonia, Skopje. Macedonia has a lot of history but the thing that I mainly knew about it beforehand was that it is the birthplace of Alexander the Great. Macedonia is spending a lot of money to revamp their capital so there are a lot of statues and nice façades being built. The highlight of the city is the statue of Alexander the Great surrounded by fountains (pictured above). Here are some pictures of the city.
After walking around and taking photos, Brenton and I stopped at an outdoor café. I just got a beer on tap because I had already eaten but Brenton ordered food and the place was nice and right along the water.
My impression of Macedonia is that it is an impoverished, but rising, European state. They have been accepted as a candidate for the European Union but are being held back by Greece over a dispute of the name “Macedonia”. They are operating under a temporary name that is something like, “The Former Republic of Yugoslavia, State of Macedonia.” In a few years I think the capital will look vastly different because of all the money being put into it.
Our campsite is in Struga, right on the shores of Lake Ohrid: one of the oldest lakes in Europe. It was pretty dark by the time that we got in and set everything up but I did manage to get some pretty fabulous photos by the lights of the cities and the moon. I plan on hopefully taking more in the morning.
Tomorrow we are headed to Albania, and our last night in a hotel. It should be interesting to see what Albania is like because my guess is that it is pretty impoverished, but we shall see.
Side Note: I forgot to mention this in the blog about Sophia. On the way out of Turkey we passed about 200 refugees from Syria. It was crazy to see them walking on the side of the road to the Turkish border, hoping to get to Germany. I hope everything goes well and that the situation is resolved soon so that there is no longer a need to flee the violence in the region.
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