After a magical first night on the Ohrid waterfront, we were looking forward to exploring the surrounding area and old town more.
We learned that the correct way to pronounce Ohrid is to put a bit of a “kh” sound after the h (OH-KREED), something all of the Western travelers in our group had trouble with. While the earliest inhabitants here were the Greek Illyrian tribes, the Southern Slavs arrived during the 6th Century AD and Ohrid eventually became capital of the First Bulgarian Empire, At that point, it started to be referred to as Achrida in written texts, a change from the Greek name Lychnidos. By 879 AD, Ohrid became the largest city on Lake Ohrid, and is now the 8th largest city in North Macedonia.
Today, Ohrid functions mostly as a popular resort town and tourist destination for summer activities and wildlife around the lake, in part due to its warm summer Mediterranean climate. Lake Ohrid was accepted as a Cultural and Natural UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1980 – only 28 places globally have this distinction. Lake Ohrid is one of Europe‘s deepest (509 feet, the deepest in the Balkans) and oldest lakes, running through both North Macedonia and Albania, and has more than 200 endemic species in the ecosystem. It is still somewhat “undiscovered” by the west but is gradually becoming more popular for global tourism outside of the regional Russian/former Yugoslavian tourism endemically present.
We boarded the bus after a meh breakfast at the somewhat sterile hotel, and set off to our first stop for the day, which was a Bronze Age stilt house reconstruction called the Ploca Micov Kamen site, on Lake Ohrid, near Peštani, North Macedonia, on the southern coast of the Gradiste Peninsula.. The site is colloquially called the Bay of Bones, due to all the animal remains found around the ancient human settlements. Due to the shallowness of this area of Lake Ohrid, the 1200-700 BC settlement was constructed on stilts, and anchored over the years by over 10,000 wooden piles. The historic site opened for the public in 2008, and is worth a stop simply for the photographic opportunities. There is also a small museum inside explaining tidbits of the ancient civilization, but also about the restoration process. Here are some pictures:
Hat tip to Jane who lent us her flat friend from home to pose with. We later stole the idea and made flat cats our of Chaucer, Freya, and Newton, and began taking them with us on future trips!
From there, we continued our way on the windy road nestled between Lake Ohrid and the mountain, and reached another historic site where the Monastery of St. Naum is located. This Eastern Orthodox monastery was founded as part of the Bulgarian Empire in 905 AD by St. Naum of Ohrid, who is also buried there in the church. The monastery has been in operations since the 16th Century. You can read more about the history and about St. Naum here. By this point in the trip, we were honestly churched out so we spent very little time in the church itself. Our guide for the day was Darko, and he shared the history of the site with us as we enjoyed the weather and the stunning backdrop.
Our favorite part of the visit of course wasn’t the church or the religious history (big surprise!), but instead the grounds, the wildlife, and the stunning views of Lake Ohrid – this area was called St. Naum Springs. You could even rent little boats to move around the canals and rivers feeding to the lake, and I think we saw some bicycle rentals as well. There were many families simply relaxing on the grounds and enjoying a beautiful day on Lake Ohrid.
And there were peacocks! I was delighted to photograph them and spent a lot of time following them around to get the best angles and lighting.
Back on the bus, we enjoyed our water and were reminded once again about the weird regional thing here in the east Balkans where the bottle caps never quite come off, dangling annoyingly like a hanging chad.
We skipped lunch today since it wasn’t provided by Gate 1, and enjoyed not being stuffed to the gills 🙂
Upon returning to Ohrid, we were bused to the Old Town area, which is named the “Jerusalem of the Balkans” – due to having 365 churches (a church for every day of the year). We were dropped of by Dragan in the parking area near the Upper Gate, and taking the stairs up led us against the city walls and into the heart of the old city, where layer upon layer of civilization – Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Slavic, and Turk – could once again be found. Once inside, we were able to see Tsar Samoil’s fortress, dating from the the First Bulgarian Empire (but was built on fortifications from previous civilizations). We then passed into the Roman Amphitheater which offered a great view of the entire city and lake below.
From the distance, we were able to barely view St. Clement’s Church, in honor of Saint Clement, a saint, a scholar and a writer. The Ohrid Literary School that he founded is associated with the creation of the Cyrillic script.
We enjoyed walking down the quaint cobblestone streets in this area, where we passed a number of artisans and restaurateurs, as well as a shop that sold local products like ajvar (a local condiment made of red bell peppers and eggplant). While we didn’t have time to go inside, we passed by the National Ohrid Museum – Robevci House, which was the house of a wealthy local family in the 1860s, now restored and converted to a museum. It was very Turkish in architecture, with the ground floor being the smallest – we loved the lanterns around town that gave a nod to the style!
We passed by the crumbling Saint Varvara church, founded in the 10th/11th century and restored, and then proceeded downward to the Church of St. Sophia. I had to backtrack because I lost my camera eyepiece, but luckily found it on the road. That’s also when I discovered the ajvar shop and the brand Mama’s Ajvar!
Our final stop was at the National Workshop for Handmade Paper, which was just super different and interesting, seeing an old craft come to life. An old man was doing paper straining demos and was also kind enough to sell us a map of the footsteps of Bucephalus (Alexander the Great’s horse), and hand stamp it with wax.
From there we walked down to the Lower Gate which marked the end of the formal tour and the beginning of a few hours of free time.
We decided to backtrack to a gorgeous art shop that we passed earlier, and hemmed and hawed around whether we should buy the signature piece on display outside. It was a little challenging finding a working ATM that wasn’t going to scam us, but the store owner told us exactly where to go. While Brendan set out to get money, I stayed near the art and the cats that belonged to the store.
We also stopped by the grocery store near the main city square/St. Clement’s status and bought a bunch of different types of ajvar, including the Mama’s Ajvar I had spotted near the Upper Gate (much cheaper at the grocery store than at the artisan shop!). After our shopping spree, we dropped off our purchases at the hotel, and then journeyed back to the Lower Gate area to commence the evening’s activities. We enjoyed a cold beer at a local brewery to kill some time before meeting the group again.
The highlight of the day (it just kept getting better and better!) was the sunset boat cruise on Lake Ohrid. We embarked from the pier near the main square, and enjoyed about 90 minutes cruising Lake Ohrid, with some accompanying cold adult beverages. As we pulled out from the dock, we were able to see the same view of Ohrid as painted in the landscape we had just purchased, which was really cool.
In particular, the most stunning view was of the 13th century Church os St. John (aka John the Apostle), perched on the cliffs above the beach of Kaneo.
Finally, we passed by a few relics of Yugoslavian history, including one of the residences of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito (first picture) named Vila Biljana, complete with a cave entrance. And then, a 1970s hotel (Inex Olgica Hotel & SPA formerly Hotel Inex Gorica) that was built to make Ohrid a tourism destination within the Yugoslav/Russian sphere. Since that it’s been upgraded and rebranded, and is one of the fancier places to stay in Ohrid.
It was a gorgeous day, and the views from the lake of the mountains, the city, and countryside put a beautiful bow on this gift of a day. As we pulled back in to the Ohrid harbor, we realized how fortunate we were to get to explore the far flung places of the world, finding little moments of beauty that would live indelibly in the nooks and crannies of our memories.
Afterwards, we joined the Gate 1 group for a somewhat mediocre dinner at Taverna Momir, overlooking Lake Ohrid, where we had Ohrid trout to honor our last night in North Macedonia.
