In Ohrid

June 20, 2018

Last Night

Nothing particular to add here about yesterday, other than to add a few photos I left off yesterday.

This party looks like they’re dressed compatibly, but they’re wearing blankets their waiter brought out to ward off a chill in the air.

This morning

Before breakfast we debated a bit how to spend our time in Ohrid. On our original plan, we were going to spend the day biking the complete circumference of the lake - a 60 mile ride that neither of us finds appealing now. Instead, we scaled back to a thirty mile out and back along the flat northern edge. We decided we would spend a half day on this, and half the day touring the city; so the issue was order. We ended up agreeing to tour the city first, and bike in the afternoon, after lunch.

That decided, we headed downstairs right at 7:30 when breakfast was due to begin. We were dismayed to find the dining hall overrun with a gang of burly, leather jacketed Harley riders quickly working their way through the food options. They were a surprisingly gracious and courteous group though, and we fit in quite well. They’re club members from several Central European countries, on a week long geocaching tour of the Balkans.

The innkeepers did a great job of keeping the food and caffeine flowing, and everyone walked out contented. After waiting around in our room long enough to watch the gang roll out, we set off to see the sights.

Breakfast at Villa Maki, hanging with the hawgs

A Harley rider from Sweden. Others in the group were from Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

I’d expected them to leave with a roar, but they were very well behaved. Quite a nice group, really.

The old city

Ohrid has been on my list for many years, mostly because I was tantalized by the photographs of the lake rimmed by snow capped mountains, and by its location in the heart of the Balkans. Neither of us did any advance study of what lay in store for us though, so we came to it armed just with some cursory web research this morning. It didn’t take long to see that there was a lot to see and most of it was in the ancient city, draped across the low hill at the north end of the waterfront promenade.

Walking along the waterfront on our way to the old city. The boats are all taxis and tour boats offering tours (10 euros for an hour) along the waterfront and the perimeter of the old city. It looked quite attractive, and we thought we might do this tomorrow morning.

These young women are part of a group of five Glaswegians on a cycle tour from London to Lesbos, Greece. They’re all young medical professionals on their way to volunteer their services at the refugee center there, as well as to raise funds for two charities they’re supporting. We found them delightful, inspirational, and humbling. Check out their website and support their cause: https://trackmytour.com/MX3nS

The street lights in the old city all have this design, suggesting one of the traditional houses.

The church at Kaneo

The church of Saint John the Theologian at Kaneo

The church of Saints Clement and Panteleimon

The reconstructed church of Saints Clement and Panteleimon, and the grounds of the Plaosnic

The reconstructed church of Saints Clement and Panteleimon

Holy Mother of God Peribleptos Church

The fortress

I should have worn my red hat today. I came home today a bit charred up top.

The bike ride

Surprise! There’s no bike ride after all. We didn’t complete our circuit of the old city until early afternoon, and then stopped in at a cafe across from Saint Sofia Church we noticed this morning. After a delicious and filling lunch we headed back to the room to digest and rest, and after a few hours of this we discovered that our motivation to hop on the bikes had moved on.

This evening

We gave some thought to going for an early ride tomorrow morning but decided it was safer to get the bikes stowed away tonight and leave room for unexpected problems. It’s a good thing we did, because problems arose. This is the first time we’ve packed our new bikes (they were packed for us in Eugene when we bought them earlier this spring), and there were some challenges. I’ve been packing Bike Fridays for quite a while now, but there are enough differences with the new ones that they don’t pack the same. These have disc brakes, and the handlebars are no longer split among other things. This sounds small, but they make a difference in the packing procedure. Fortunately Rachael took a video of them when they were packed in Eugene, so we had this as a model to refer back to.

The biggest challenge though was removing the handlebar stem. This should be pretty straight forward - it should just pull out after loosening the quick release, but we were unable to extract either of them. This is a significant problem, because the bike won’t fit into the suitcases unless the stem is completely removed. We worked at this for about twenty minutes and I was about to give up and start looking for a bike store or garage to take them to, when we gave mine one last try, and it finally gave way; as did Rachael ‘s soon afterwards. Big relief!

With all of our issues, it took us a bit over two hours before we were done. During this entire time, we were serenaded by a guy in the neighboring driveway. He was playing some sort of Slavic music on his ghetto blaster, LOUDLY; gyrating wildly to it; singing along loudly, punctuating it with ear piercing, LOUD high pitched whistles. Periodically the music would die down, a few moments of blessed quiet would give us some hope; but then he would just start it over again. And again. And again. And again.

About 7:30, our nerves totally shot, we finally finished with the bikes and fled the scene as quickly as we could for a waterfront pizzeria. Two mornings later, back in Portland, I woke up to this Macedonian ‘tune’ playing over in my head and was again driven mad just to be reminded of the experience.

Packing for home didn’t go as smoothly as it usually does. And I never care to hear Macedonian music again.

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