Visit from the Burmese - part 2

We took a little "Balkan tour" while Matthew, Heather, and the boys were visiting. We were gone four days and three nights and the kids did great for all the travel. Missionary kids can do flexibility. We traveled light - Euro style.

 Here are some fun photos from our trip...

Our first stop was a taste of Tirana, our capital city. Then we crossed the northern border into Montenegro. I wish it had been as simple as that. It turned out that the border we happened to be crossing, every Albanian living in Italy was also crossing to get back after the holidays and to top it off, the computers were down. It took us FIVE hours. That was some quality time. We eventually made it through and got to the guest house Kenny had booked. He got some good prices through airbnb.com. We walked along a nice rocky beach in the city where we stayed, Bahr. And we were excited to find a Chinese food restaurant, Kenny and I anyway. What we saw of Montenegro was beautiful, and I hope to go there again someday. 

From Montenegro, we hopped back into Albania and visited the castle at Shkodra, then got on the road for Prishtina, Kosovo. We got in late and stayed at a hostel in the center. We spent the morning walking about the city - it didn't seem much different from Albania to me, but I'd be interested in spending more time there to see just how different the Kosovar Albanian culture is from Albanian. My highlight was sitting in the center eating popcorn with Judson. He wanted it so bad and the vendor was nice and gave us a free second bag freshly popped...he must have enjoyed watching us while we were people watching.

It was a short drive from Prishtina to Skopje, Macedonia. We stayed at a horribly retro apartment - I'm so disappointed that I didn't take any photos there. It was fantastic though. In a good location, walking distance to the center, and had so much space for us after two tight nights. It was a nice city, home of Mother Teresa and Alexander the Great, and I hope we can return sometime. I feel like we didn't see enough statues. Here are a couple of the hundreds. 

Before leaving Skopje the next day, we went up to the gigantic cross that overlooks the very Orthodox city. It was a completely cloudy day, but we decided to take the gondola to the top anyway. It was cheap and the boys would love it. I'm so glad we did. It turned out to be awesome high above the clouds. Fun.

The final stop on our roadtrip was the charming lakeside city of Ohrid. We didn't have much day left to really explore this historic place, but we enjoyed what we saw and got a cheap boat ride and awesome view of Ohrid from the lake. 

We saw some beautiful places on our trip. So glad that M&H coming gave us a good reason to go. We crammed a lot into a short time and enjoyed it all. It was great to see a little more of our part of the world so easily and inexpensively. When are YOU coming?