Our first stop was at Cele-Kula, which was tower made of human skulls to commemorate the first Serbian uprising. It was a very gruelling and somber sight, as the pictures will show. Once again we are reminded of the atrocities that humans are capable of committing.
We arrived in Nis, Serbia's third largest city in time for lunch. Since the weather was so perfect we choose a restaurant right beside the river. We had lots of laughs as we once again were reminded how huge the portions are in Serbia. The food is delicious but WAY too plentiful! Each time the young waiter showed up with more plates of food we would cut up with laughter. The poor guy probably wondered what he was doing wrong! The amazing thing is that it is so very inexpensive that we just couldn't help but to leave him a huge tip to unload our Serbian Dinar. So, I guess everyone was happy in the end!
When we arrived at the border of Macedonia, our TD was unsure of how it would go. We sent the bus driver out to test the waters. He came back to the bus to make coffee and get bottles of water for some of the border guards (on their request - don't want to make THEM mad). Eventually an officer came onto the bus, took all of our passports and, to our delight, returned our passports with a new stamp! Yeah!!
We arrived in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia at 5:30 and checked into our hotel. We left an hour later on the bus to go to dinner. Since this is the first time running this tour, our driver and TD did not know how to find the restaurant. They tried using a GPS but soon got tired of the "rude British lady" trying to tell them where to go but never finding the restaurant. After driving by the same landmarks several times (literally going in circles) they decided to hail a cab driver to lead us to the restaurant. An hour and several circles later, we arrived at the restaurant! Since we have a very good natured group, we all had a good laugh about the adventure. Also, it turns out that Skopje is a very beautiful city at night!
Once we finally arrived, we discovered that it was worth the drive! The restaurant was incredible and there were two musicians playing some wonderful dinner music. We were fed a delicious meal that included a "chicken roll" which was chicken breast, stuffed with cheese and rolled with bacon, mmmm! The meal was topped off with a shot of "Macedonian hootch" that burned all the way down but turned a few of us into really good dancers!!
The return trip to the hotel went very quickly (thank goodness). Our hotel is located right on the pedestrian street so we took a little stroll to see a beautiful fountain and all of the gorgeous buildings lit up before calling it a night.
Tomorrow we will have a tour of Skopje and then leave in the afternoon. I already know that I won't be ready to leave as this is an amazingly beautiful city.
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