Exploring Ohrid - Visiting a Fortress, Monastery, and an Amphitheater in One Morning! 🇲🇰

My day started early again. I was awake just after 5 a.m., so by 6 I decided to get up and go for a walk, leaving Sarah to enjoy a sleep-in of sorts.

I walked the lakefront in the opposite direction to yesterday. The promenade soon turned into the best walking and cycling path I’ve ever seen. It was as wide as a road, with seats down the centre and riding lanes on both sides. Walkers in the middle could steer to their own side with plenty of room. The locals must love running and walking along here.

The walkway–cycleway ran for just over 2.5 km, which was far enough for me. At that point, it turned into a much smaller, rural-looking path. Just over 5 km to get my day started.

Sarah was still asleep when I got back, but was soon up and about. We had breakfast and then set off up the hill behind the old town area. The fortress is called Samuel’s Fortress and doesn’t open until 9 a.m., so it was already pretty hot on the steep walk up. The entry ticket is only 150 denars each (about $4.50 NZD). You can climb and walk some of the walls, which are quite high with super steep steps. There’s only about 200 metres of wall that’s walkable, but it’s still impressive and gives good views. We finally got a view of the outer reaches of Ohrid city, and it’s quite a bit bigger than we realised. More info on the fortress here: Samuels Fortress

After enjoying our visit to the fortress, we headed down and across the hill to the Saint Clement Monastery—a beautiful church building with very different architecture from other churches we’ve seen. The entry fee was also 150 denars, which seemed reasonable, so we decided to go inside. The grounds around the church look very old (some Googling required!). The inside of the church is again quite different. Every surface is painted with the usual religious-type scenes, but there are also scenes depicting the fortress above, which is cool. The colours are vibrant and new-looking, so I’m assuming it’s been fully restored recently. Saint Clement I was right—it was fully restored in 2002, but the original church and grounds date back to around the year 900 AD.

We continued further down the hill to an ancient Macedonian amphitheatre, originally built in the 2nd or 3rd century BC. According to the signs, it was also apparently used by the Romans when they invaded, as a gladiator-style theatre. Ohrid Amphitheater

Back at lake level, things were very warm, so I was keen to head to the air conditioning ASAP—but first a stop at the supermarket and bakery to grab something for lunch. Very fresh bread and Laughing Cow cheese (called Happy Cow here).

There was no afternoon siesta today, but it was a close call. Instead, we locked in our Beat the August Heat plan—two flights booked, with destinations to be revealed later. 😉 The compromise with this plan is that we’ll be skipping Spain and Portugal, which were part of our rough route. The Spanish won’t miss us anyway—they're so busy protesting that they don’t want tourists, so we’ll help them out. I’ll be slightly disappointed to miss Portugal, but that’s OK. We’ll look at doing a shorter trip there in a few years. 🤞

Sarah also did battle with yet another front loading washing machine today. I swear that 2 out of 3 we have had issues with and had to message the apartment hosts for help. Today's issue was not putting washing powder in the dispenser therefore it would not start. We have special washing sheets that we brought with us, thanks Sarika, and they have been great. But today the machine insisted you must add powder! Which was supplied at the apartment. The other issues have generally been with the doors or not choosing the right cycle. So this was another thing to add to the future debugging list. 

We decided to try some local cuisine for dinner. We haven’t seen many good options in the supermarket for cooking for ourselves here, and this apartment is slightly lacking in the kitchen. We went to a restaurant Sarah found through its good online reviews. It was called Gostilnica Neim. It’s a family-run place, and the youngest son was the waiter. He was being kept very busy and did a great job helping us with selections. 

We had a goulash with white beans "Taskebabli kuru fasulye", stuffed peppers "Piperki polneti", and a tomato, cucumber, and olive salad with cheese on top "Sopska salad" — plus some bread to soak up the gravy. It was all delicious. Total cost: 1,100 denars, or $35 NZD, which is on the steep side for these Kiwi travellers, but worth the splurge. 

Today was another great and memorable day. Ohrid has turned out to be a fantastic destination, and we’re very glad we came here.