Oh wow!!! Skopje is just so hard to describe! First of all it is ridiculous! I believe it’s the city with the most statues and mon...

Crazy Skopje!

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Oh wow!!!
Skopje is just so hard to describe! First of all it is ridiculous! I believe it’s the city with the most statues and monuments per square meter in the whole world! 
The main stretch looks really funny with at least 100 bronze statues spread all throughout the streets; the city feels plastiki and fake but in a good way. I think the overwhelming amount of statues makes an impression that I probably will never forget. 


During my time in Skopje I wandered around the town and checked out all the monuments. It was fascinating, I have no idea how a city gets away with putting so many monuments all over the town!


They even have statues in the water!!!


My favorite fountain... portraying motherhood!

Standing in front of this fountain I could count 18 statues if i did a 360 turn.










Tired of them yet?!?! So many more to come!



I lost count of them!!!

Don't be fooled... this is a different bridge from the picture above!



In all fairness, some of the streets only had one or two statues, and some didn't have any but it was fun to walk and try to find some funny ones. 
The modern girl! haha
One thing that I loved about Macedonia, specially Skopje, was the amount of real bookstores that I saw. In the digitalized era that we live in it's becoming really hard for bookstores to stay open but in Skopje I saw so many that it was refreshing (but sadly in this one no one was inside!)




Mother Teresa of Calcutta is from Skopje so obviously they had statues of her and  churches in her name and saw different streets with her name.


Part of my time in Skopje I spent it in the turkish part of town, where I felt like I was walking the streets of Istanbul (or Sarajevo) watching people drink tea, baklava, or traditional Turkish/ Macedonian meals.  

So many souvenirs!



It feels like I'm in Turkey!


The barbershop!




To be honest my favorite part of the Turkish area was the local market where all fruit and veggies were so cheap! Less than ONE EURO for ONE KILO of Cherries!!!!!!!!! At the farmers market is $7.99 per pound!!!... I got a kilo... and ate it all! haha


Not far from the Turkish part was the beautiful Fortress overlooking Skopje!




Skopje from up top!


Day

Night

One day I went with a girl from my hostel, Mikayla, to check out the Matka canyon. The people from the hostel said there were two things to do: 1. Go on a boat and visit some caves and 2. Hike up to the monastery and look down at the canyon.

We started with the boat ride and visiting the caves which ended up being extremely disappointing. The boat ride was actually nice and relaxing but definitely not worth the 7euros (Or 7 kilos of cherries!)






This is it?!?!?! Boooring! haha

On the way back I was going back and forth with the idea of doing a hike up to a monastery and somehow Mikayla agreed so the boat driver dropped us on the other side of the water and we climbed up.


Guess what? The view from the top was also a little disappointing, it looked nothing like the poster at the hostel, but in reality most things don’t look like the poster.




Look... we were way down there!

While we soak up the sun (and the view) we noticed some mountain climbers and we got tired just by looking at them! It was so hot and it looked like so much work!

Shortly after we decided to start walking down so we would get back in time for the bus. This time we had to hike down from the opposite side that we came from otherwise we would have to pay for the boat to come pick us up. The route looked very confusing so I decided to go ask the climbers for directions on how to get back “the easy way.” They started explaining it and it was very confusing but luckily one of the guys said he needed to go down to get a helmet and we could come with him because they have a special permission to cross the dam bridge.

On the way down we had a great conversation with the Macedonian climber, he told us about his climbing experience, how he lost not only the tip of two fingers but also two team mates while climbing Mount Everest. He went on to tell us how hard it was for him to loose his teammates and how he got through the grieving process. He also mentioned that since he lost part of his fingers it was harder to climb since his grip wasn’t the same but he never gave up. As a traveler these are the experiences that I look forward to, when I am able to talk to people who are different than me, people who have stories to tell, I love it when at the end of the day I go to sleep and I have experienced something special, something different, something that widens my view of those around me.




Mikayla and I were so lucky to have found this guy. The hike down was not a clear path (I even fell down once!) and probably we would not have found our way to the bus stop.
We felt like we were in a hurry since we needed to catch a bus but before getting the bus Mikayla stopped to get some nuts from this nice gentleman!


We walked down not really remembering where the bus stop was but we finally found it. The bus was supposed to arrive at 1:30pm but we never saw it, by 2pm we thought maybe it was early and we missed it but a local guy said it would come any minute. At some point the bus was 40 minutes late so I asked him "Was there any way the bus was early and we missed it?" he laughed, he said no way! He said "we run on Macedonian time" and almost an hour after the schedule arrival of the bus we were on our way back to Skopje!



In my three days in Skopje I walked around the streets many times, I specially loved it during the late afternoon/sunset, when the sky changed colors and the streets lit up!


Even their bridges are fancy! But somehow some people decided to throw colored paint all over them!







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About Post Author

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!

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About me




Hi! It's me... Andrea!

In this blog you can live vicariously through my journey around the world!

Please feel free to share tips or places to go!
Contact me: andreaheartstraveling@gmail.com