Today is an awesome day! It is amazing what a nice vehicle, driven by a good driver, with a good guide can do for you. While its fun to have a car so that you can do things the way you want and have control over your day, having a driver is also very nice. It can be exhausting to drive for hours, so this way, you get to see the countryside, but not have the stress of driving on your shoulders.
We are in a beautiful bus…its not a van, its like a small 19 passenger bus. Its in lovely condition and has AC! Whoot!. Our driver, Def, is great - he is a good and conscientious driver and even keeled - not at all like the crazy man that drove us from Montenegro. We also have a guide, his name is Adam and he is extremely knowledgeable and a lot of fun. He spent 13 years or so in England, so his english is good and he’s got a great sense of humour which make the day pass easily.
We head up North out of Tirana before we turn northeast and head towards Kosovo. While Skopje Macedonia is about in the same direction, we really want to get our feet over the border into Kosovo so we can say we’ve been there! With some of these countries that are still settling themselves, you just never know if they will be the same in a few years from now, so best to get in and see them while we can.
Its a beautiful drive through Albania - they have built a new beautiful highway and at one point near the Kosovo border we go through an amazing 6 mile tunnel. We hit the border and go right through and the roads in Kosovo are great too. We arrive easily into Prizren which is our first stop. We get out and enjoy a lovely walk around the town and in the end decide to have lunch here. It is smoking hot as is the norm these days. So we don’t walk too long as its truly unbearable. We dine in what Adam claims is “the best restaurant in Kosovo” - and it is good, although the restaurant itself is super unique. It is enormous with multiple floor and inside and outside terraces and rooms. There is a huge pond that the kids enjoy looking for fish and turtles in.
After lunch we pile back into our bus and head north further to the capital of Kosovo, Pristina. Here we get out and have a quick walk around, we stop for ice cream and for some fun in a water fountain built into the street and then head back to the bus.
The roads from Pristina to Skopje are not as great and its much slower going. To be honest, this is what I had expected for the whole drive and the new highway all the way to Pristina had been a really nice surprise.
We arrive into Skopje and have a heck of a time finding our apartments, but we do in the end and they are great. We had not been able to find one place for the whole group so rented two smaller apartments. The owners is a lovely lady and she takes us up to ours and then walks Mom, Bruce and Brian over to theirs.
After settling in, its pretty late, the clan comes over to our place to check out our view - which is pretty awesome, and then we head around the corner to a cute little restaurant for dinner. We have lovely salads and meat and wine and have found the people here also very friendly and warm.
We head back to sleep after dinner, it truly was a really nice day.
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