North Macedonia First Stop
Skopje
- Next to Macedonia (Now
North Macedonia) and the capital Skopje.
Known apparently as the city of Statues and Monuments for
good reason.
The Skopje or Kale Fortress first built in the 6th century
AD.
The fortress has had a number of different lives over the
centuries and has a mixed history of various rulers. A lot of
restoration work has been done but at the time of our visit seems now
to be at a stand still. We were fortunate to find a young
archeologist working there as a guide and he had a very good knowledge
of the fortress. The fortress sits on the highest point of
the
city and gives a panoramic view to the river and city area.
We
were very fortunate on the two occasions we stayed there to be close to
the main city centre. Skopje has been inhabited since at
least
4000BC and has been in the control of several different empires
including Roman, Byzantine, Early Serbian, Ottoman etc. We
had
never seen so many statues, monuments, historic and copy historic
buildings and lots of museums in such a small area. We did
visit
the Holocaust Museum which to us was a must. Very
comprehensive
and extremely confronting it has the story and a memorial to the
holocaust of thousands of Macedonian Jews during the Second World War
makes you feel very humbled.
- After Kosovo back to
Skopje Macedonia and a couple more nights there.
We have covered our travels there in the last Skopje segment.
We did travel through to Strumica and stayed in a lovely
apartment but didn't see a great deal of the city. Difficult
to
get to Bulgaria from here other than the capital Sofia. Our
hosts
had a friend with a hire car to take us to Melnik Bulgaria.
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