Evening and Day in Skopje, Macedonia

We arrived at our hotel, the Holiday Inn Skopje, where the front desk agent was a step back in time 20 years to a time when the concept of customer service in this corner of the world just didn’t exist. He got us our room, but that was about it. Upgrade? Forget about it. Benefits as a platinum member? Forget about it. Help finding places to eat, etc? Yeah, you get the picture.

That said, the room was clean, cool, and comfortable so there’s really nothing to complain about, especially since our rate of around 100 euro was completely reasonable. We headed out for a walk, and the first stop was coffee. We found a small coffeeshop on Alexander the Great / Macedonia Square and got some espressos and eventually a few local beers to get us moving again before dinner.

Wandering to dinner, we walked past the National Theatre, which was nicely lit:

For dinner, we decided to try Old City House which received quite good reviews on TripAdvisor. When we got there, they informed us they were full, but there was a nice room downstairs we could eat in…problem was, we were the ONLY people in this room.  While we ate they sat two more tables so it was a little less odd.  Food was solid, good salads and grilled meats, but nothing overly memorable.  It did the trick though.

The next morning, we decided to just wander the city.  The one thing that struck us about Skopje was all the statues.  Everywhere.  This is just a sampling of all the statue pics we took – it’ll give you a little idea of just how plentiful they are.  I haven’t been able to figure out what’s behind this, but if anyone has an idea I’d love to know!

We’ll start with one from the #WTF or #QDF gallery.  Is this some sort of abortion statement or something?

Odd diving / swimming statue:

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So…yeah, you get the idea!

After a full day of wandering, we were exhausted, and it was time for some coffee.  Where else but the Drama Cafe!  LOLZ

 

Where we had the drama coffee, something with espresso, whipped cream, banana liquour…they were darn tasty…I may have had a few…

This was followed by the need to find some food.  We wanted traditional quick food, so opted to try Destan which was supposed to have some of the best Kebabs in town.  They definitely didn’t disappoint!

 

Then it was back to the hotel, time to grab our bags, and fly to Istanbul for the overnight before heading home.