Bitola June 1st

The night behind the theatre in Bitola was good. We were woken up by a noise and we realized that we parked next to the school. Bitola is a very old town with a lot of interesting sights. First we visited a small mosque where was an exhibition of drawings from the international children drawing festival. Than we went to the old bazaar, one of the biggest in Macedonia. There were many small shops and no tourists. People were very friendly. We bought nice fresh food at the market and put it back to the car. Our next site was Heraclea, an old roman city. On the way we have stopped in a local pub for lunch and were surprised how many young people are walking on the street and how people are relaxed. On the way to Heraclea we got a bit lost and passed through an old zoo, it looked very aged with only few small animals. Heraclea was a very beautiful and very well preserved old roman settlement with a big amphiteater. It was quite strange to see such a beautiful historical sight and no tourist. Only school excursions with kids who were not too interested about the great history of their country. It was almost 5 and started to rain when we left Bitola. Ohrid was only 80 km but we decided to go first to the Prespanske lake and than cross the mountains to lake Ohrid. The weather was bad so we did not make any stop at the lake. The mountain road was very beautiful and it was a pity that we could not see much. We pasted through the clouds to the other side in 1600 m. Before going to Ohrid city we planned to stop at St. Neum monastery. We have arrived there around 8 pm and were happy to find out that it was still open. There was a nice man who gave us a private tour of the church. He told us about paintings in the church and the history of this place that is very connected with the begging of the Slavic languages and writtings. There is a grave of St. Neum who was a student of Cyril and Metodej. The 2 famous saints who brought the writing to the Slavic nations. Outside of the church we met Nevzdat with his uncle and his lover. They invited us for coffee and we found out that Nevzdat is a border police inspector and lives in Skopie. He is helping here his uncle who has a firm on recuntructing houses. He invited us to see him in Ohrid. We planed to explore more this very nice place and we stayed over night at the parking lot close to the lake Ohrid.