Ohrid

I purchased my ticket for the next bus to Ohrid leaving at 11:00 am & arriving at 2:00 pm.  At the bus station I ran into a Spanish guy that I met at Matka Canyon, he has traveled all over Eastern Europe & was heading to Kosovo.  The bus to Ohrid was a 20 seat minibus that was half full, so I had plenty of room to stretch out.  The hotel that I stayed at in Ohrid was a short walk from the bus station.  Unfortunately my room faced the street & it was difficult to get a good nights sleep while I was there.  I tried to switch rooms, but they were unable (or unwilling) to do so.

After arriving in town, I made the 20 minute walk into town which sits on Lake Ohrid.  It is really beautiful & is a relatively inexpensive place to visit.  For some reason it is very popular with Dutch tourists.  When I was walking by an outdoor cafe, I noticed a guy that looked familiar & it was a young German guy that I met on the bus to Kosovo.  We went out to dinner together that night and were supposed to meet up the next night, but he got food poisoning from dinner, luckily I ordered something different than he did.



I went on a boat cruise to another town on the lake which was really nice & was only $11.  I was able to get some nice photos & had a good lunch at a restaurant with a great view of the lake.  The waiter asked where I was from & when I said the USA, he talked about how much he loved America.








There is a really well known church called St. John's that is in many promotional photos of Lake Ohrid that I went to photograph a few times.  Here are a few of the better shots that I got there.




I started running a little low on local currency and found a nearby ATM.  I selected the fast withdrawal option and thought I had selected 2,000 denears, which was about $36.  But when the money slot opened there were lots of bills that kept coming out of the ATM.  I was thinking maybe the machine was broken, but when I counted up 20,000 denears ($360), I realized I had misread the screen & selected 20,000 instead of 2,000.  I was thinking what the hell just happened here and I also said a few words I can't repeat.

I then went inside the bank and explained what had happened to a bank employee.  She was very nice & recommended an exchange place down the street that had a minimal spread on currency rate.  There ended being no fees for the exchange & I changed the money into Euros so that I could use it to pay for a few of my hotels in Greece.  After all that excitement, I ended up losing about $.80 on the exchange.  What a relief!!!  I still don't understand why 20,000 denears was a quick withdrawal option since it is probably equivalent to almost one month's wages for a local person in Ohrid.

My last day in Ohrid was pretty laidback & I hiked up to a fortress and church.  I also hung out by the lake and tried falafel for the first time & thought it was actually pretty good.  I had a simple dinner that night (pizza) and packed my things for my bus trip in the morning to my next destination (Tirana, Albania).

Overall I really liked Ohrid in spite of my hotel and would love to visit it again.  Here are are a few more photos from my time there.















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