Lake Ohrid, Macedonia - 11- 12 May

The bus ride through Macedonia was cool because of the beautiful mountains and scenes like these.

Lake Ohrid is a giant lake, third oldest lake in the World behind Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, which I have been to, and Lake Baikal in Russia?? Ohrid is the Macedonian resort town. Set up like a beach community with the pedestrian only streets and a bunch of cafes, shops, bars and restaurants. We literally were hounded by about 7 people trying to rent us apartments before we even set foot on the ground off the bus. Its like someone called ahead and said that Americans were getting off this bus. Cause they didn't bother anyone but us. Man, they tried so hard, but having gotten used to this type of treatment, we just walked away saying no thanks. After going down a side street we came out on the lake walk. A guy from the bus, had swung around and managed to ambush us, these people were persistent. But, we followed lonely planet to a place right on the lake. She was booked but took us to her friend and we got this place for cheap.

Lake Ohrid is awesome. Its surrounded by mountains, which were still snow capped while we were there. Its the ultimate outdoor activities place. There are hiking trails everywhere, and all sorts of water stuff to do. So, it would be great in the summer. Here's some pictures of us hiking to a church and of the lake itself.

This church was hidden behind a cove outside of town.

Storm clouds were rolling in, but Ben captured this awesome shot of the sunlight peaking through.

This was our last full day together.

Here's a Roman ampitheater/arena that we pretty much just ran into walking back to our hotel from the castle. It was pretty big, you can see the size of it by looking at Pappy.

We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how we were going to get into Albania. This was the one part of the trip were we didn't have a confident plan from previous research. We knew it was possible, but would be confusing and possible time consuming. However, Pappy and I had a flight from Tirana at 5am Saturday morning, so we didn't have much breathing room. But, we decided it would be nice to take a boat across the lake the next morning. So we haggled with the boat taxi guys for prices. That night we went to a nice dinner, Pappy ordered Lake Ohrid Trout, which is illegal. I guess they are worried about the amount of stock in the lake. So right now he is on the Macedonian wanted list. Since it was off-season there wasn't much going on and we headed home early to get ready for our crazy trip into Albania.