Skopje - BA's Hoose

          Skopje was lovely although a little bit warm for us northerners  ! we stayed right in the centre of town it was 30degrees and clear sky's , by the time we got unpacked and organised then went for a stroll around the centre it was 21:00 ,i don't think I've ever spent as long sitting down as yesterdays drive so it felt a bit strange walking at first !, There is some lovely statues, buildings, bridges and a big fortress ,its a city famous as the birthplace of alexander the great and mother Theresa ,but although the buildings and statues where impressive they looked a little clean almost modern ! but we enjoyed our night out and dinner was lovely all reasonably priced, i spent around £40 in total we had dinner in a nice restaurant centre location overlooking the main square ,after 5-6 beers each in some nice bars,

     You couldn't help but notice that lots of the statues where paint bombed there was spllodges of multi coulored paints on loads of the statues !! I said Cammy we must research why ! The video footage of the protest against the dictatorship riots is quiet impressive ! And from only a few nights ago no wonder the paints still colourful and there was a lot of guards around ! There was thousands out protesting and paint balling ! 

I took this pic to remind me to research but you can hardly see the paint on my photos ,maybe if I had checked the FCO website and read this we may have chose a different route lol ! - Most visits to Macedonia are trouble-free. Occasional acts of criminal violence occur, although foreigners are not generally targeted. 

Take particular care if you travel to the north of Macedonia near the border with Kosovo. See Crime and Local travel

Oh well it all worked out well 

our hotel bill for the night was 85 euros which on my receipt is 5164,00 MKD plus 80MKD tourist tax ,we are working it at 80MKDens to the pound ,breakfast wasn't unto much it was mostly cheese and dairy and I'm still of milk for the month ,

        At 10:30am we drove past mother Theresa's house with our special pedestrian pass and headed up alexander the great avenue past alexander the great airport , on the last leg of our journey to Velike tarnovo Bulgaria (well my bros house on the suburbs)  ,
       the landscape around skopje is very arid dry scrubland and as we were driving along a big snake was sidewinding across the main road ! I've seen adders and grass snakes in Scotland , but this was a proper big and fast snake , fortunately for hissing Sid he managed to slither between the wheels of the mighty merc, we hit the first of the last two toll roads in Macedonia you could pay in euros or MKD it was only 1.50euro but half that price if you paid with MKD so at 60mkd our last tolls where easily the cheapest. before long we were back winding up and down lovely mountain passes not as beautiful as the Serbian mountain passes but still a pleasant and scenic drive. and we came to our final and longest border crossing between Macedonia and Bulgaria at midday .first stop was Macedonia customs the woman here was asking me lots of questions about where had we come from and why at first i thought she was interrogating me for security reasons turns out the woman was amazed by our 2000mile trip and loving the chat ,next was the border police stop which cammy nearly drove past ! he was a bit grumpy about that and took ages over our documents i thought we would get trouble but no problem , then it was Bulgarian border police same deal hand over passports hand over car documents ,then at last Bulgarian customs open car boot what do you have in there ? where have you come from ?where are you going ? and for the fourth and last time of this trip! we have drove from home in the UK and going to my brothers house in Bulgaria to visit him, of course i can't tell them the motors his and I'm leaving it there , I put my watch forward an hour as Bulgaria is two hours in front of the uk , and got the usual txt from three mobile about rates I've had mobile data switched of the last couple of days as mobile data is good in some countries but not in others yesterday for example in Macedonia it was £6 for a MB of download today in Bulgaria it was only 4pence a megabyte ! slight difference from one border to the next and most countries its free . Bulgaria was our 13th country in 6days of travel not a world record but not bad ! Bulgaria also has a vignette system for car tax so we bought a weeks worth turns out we waste that money as Bryan had some in the house but we may have been stopped after the border and the 4hr 45mins drive from the border to Bryan's house past sofia !the drive through Bulgaria was not new to us so we weren't our usual touristy selfs , although it was nice to see the storks standing on their huge nests on the town telegraph poles , the rest of the drive we were just wanting to arrive , 2430miles we had done from my house by the time we parked up at Bryan's house in Bulgaria

I stopped to far up the street to get a decent picture of the stork in its nest 

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