I didn’t have much time for North Macedonia, just two nights in the capital, Skopje. Booking.com now has a lot of private hosts on the website now to book apartments to compete with Airbnb (and less fees) so that’s what I did, got a one bedroom apartment near the bus station. The owner wasn’t around, so he had his cute little old mom come by and show me the apartment and give me the keys, there’s not many digital/keyless entries in the Balkans! She could speak pretty good English, which is pretty uncommon for the older people around the Balkans, and she knew of Michael Jordan from Chicago, ha. I hadn’t cooked much lately, so I walked down to the grocery store and bought some chicken breasts and seasoning packets to whip up for an early dinner, as I hadn’t eaten anything on the bus all day. I wasn’t paying close attention to the time, so I missed having the chance to go out and find a cool spot for sunset as I was a good 20 minute walk away from downtown. Agh, I hate that!
Oh and by the way, the reason the country is officially called North Macedonia is that it’s been in conflict with Greece over the term Macedonia, as Greece has it’s own region that is also called Macedonia, (before there were borders it was all part of one larger region) so they really really don’t like another country being able to exclusively use that as a name, as many Greeks consider themselves ‘Macedonians.’ And another cause of consternation is that Alexander the Great was from Greek Macedon, the city of Pella, and Macedonia has basically appropriated him to be from their country, as you can see his massive statue in the main square. It wasn’t until 2019 that Macedonia signed the Prespa Accord to end the decades long conflict by being officially called North Macedonia.
View from just outside my apartment. Perfect skies for a sunset and this was all I could get
I did make it to the old town just after sunset and got some okay photos. It’s another Ottoman era old town with the mosques, hamams (bathhouses), bazaars and all that jazz. Always a good spot to find a shisha cafe. The Baazar is generally where the ethnic Albanians live, who make up 17% of the population, as opposed to ethnic Macedonians.
I ended up a popular outdoor restaurant and ordered one of the more expensive things on the menu, the lamb platter. In the photo it is has a full rectangular tray of thick lamb cuts, a giant heap of fries, coleslaw, tomatoes etc, it looked great. After like 30 minutes my meal came out, a plate of a few small, grizzly pieces of lamb, no fries, no tomatoes, and a small scoop of slaw. LOL. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I asked my waiter about it, I don’t think his English was so good, so he flagged down someone else to talk to me. He said the french fry machine was broken, they just ran out of tomatoes and were getting more, and as for the lamb looking nothing like the photos, well it’s just a photo! Hahaha, okay. No apologies, no discount, that’s just the way it is. Ahhh the Balkans. Usually when they don’t have something they do this weird thing where they don’t tell you up front for some reason and just replace it with whatever they have and bring it out to, and you just have to be okay with it. Not omit it completely! Anyway that was by far my worst meal in the Balkans and the one restaurant I reviewed on Google.
The next day I took the bus out to the Matka canyon, which is just 10 miles outside of the city! Although the bus takes over an hour to get there. Once you’re inside the canyon you can either hike it, take a boat trip, or rent a kayak. I hadn’t done any almost any kayaking, so that seemed like a good choice. There’s a trip to a cave about two hours round trip, so that was a pretty nice way to spend a beautiful sunny afternoon.
Matka Canyon
That evening I took a stroll on the other side of the river, and wow, it is a whole nother world! It was pretty surprising to see, massive new buildings with the large Roman columns, towering statues, with the crown piece being Alexander the Great on his horse in the middle of the square. Oh and there’s pirate ships in the river! hahaha. I guess this was all part of a downtown revitalization program starting in 2008. It’s get’s a lot of critcism because everything looks just kind of cheap and kitschy, and there’s a push to take out the pirate ships, which are supposed to give you the ‘feeling of antiquity’ but don’t make much sense. There’s three of them, two function as hotel restaurants and the last one is still there but it’s ripped up and abandoned. Of course in true Balkans style they’ve just left it sitting there rotting and you can take the pathway onto it and explore it’s trash and shattered glass filled shell!
I kind of liked the pirate ships! And the ridiculous statues! If you don’t know what to expect going in, it kind of takes you aback a bit, definitely raises the eyebrows. But hey, it’s memorable! Definitely more memorable than your standard downtown area. I mean I get it if the locals don’t like, it’s pretty corny. But as a tourist just there for a short time, I thought it was pretty cool.
Alexander the Great dominating the main plaza
So that was my quick stop into Macedonia, of course I wish I had more time to see some other places around the country, but you can only fit in so much in 2.5 months :p