Weekend in Ohrid: Logistics and Our Experience

If you’ve read my first post, you’ll know that we recently got back from a trip to Lake Ohrid. If you haven’t already read that post, then check it out first here. This post is going to talk more about our personal experiences and also some of the logistics!

Logistics

• Booked flights with WizzAir who fly direct between London and Ohrid on limited days/times. Snapped up the cheapest flights within the time period. They cost us <£70 each. The main catch was their restrictive baggage policy – unless you want to pay extra, you only get 1 carry-on bag (which must fit under the seat in front!). Since we were only going for 3 nights we went for it and it worked out fine!

• Macedonia is SO cheap; our Airbnb had a gorgeous view from the terrace and only cost £20 a night!

• As I said, Macedonia is SO cheap! We only spent ~£120 across our 3.5 days between the 2 of us – and enjoyed a number of nice meals out (and bottles of wine!) as part of that. The currency is the Macedonian Denar but places tend to also take euros

So flights all went fine on Saturday morning and the drop into Ohrid was spectacular – over Galichica National Park and the Lake itself! On arrival to the airport I had heard that we’d be able to take cash out at the airport and then there would be a bus to the town. Expectations were not reality and so we only had our 50 euro note. Also no sign of a bus (or even a bus stop) so we hopped in a taxi which said it cost 8 euros. We only ran into a problem when we got to our accommodation… our bus driver didn’t have change for our cash even though we’d already said we only had euros! Then ensued a detour to an ATM and significant increase in the fare!

What felt like eventually, we were in our gorgeous Air BnB! We did have a super early start in the UK (2:30 am) so my boyfriend wanted to have a short rest but I was keen to get out exploring while the weather was amazing! So that’s what we did – and I went gallivanting on my own for an hour or so until we reunited for lunch!

We found a nice lake-side spot for lunch. My boyfriend fancied a pizza and I had a club sandwich. Along with a couple of drinks each, lunch was under 20 euros! During lunch we were joined by a stray dog which was no bother until another stray dog decided to join the party and caused a bit of a dog fight. Since we were so close to the water, the women on the table next to us almost ended up in the water! I was just focused on saving the wine on our table while my boyfriend had his leg in the middle of the dog fight trying to break it up?!

After the excitement at lunch time we went on our tourist jaunt around Ohrid getting all of those classic pictures. In the evening we went back down to town and had a lovely dinner with a bottle of Macedonian Chardonnay at a different lake-side restaurant.

The weather on Sunday wasn’t so nice but was supposed to be better than Monday so we decided to do the boat trip to St. Naum. It’s 10 euros per person and a full day trip. The boat actually takes a good while so given the weather we made the sensible choice to sit inside! The weather when we got there actually was very bright and dry so we made the most of it and walked around to the springs. On the way back it started spotting with rain and was a little grey when we were at the monastery. At that point we pitted for lunch which was definitely a sensible choice because it started tipping it down! We had already found a restaurant (under cover) and had a leisurely lunch with a bottle of wine and cocktails/desserts!

After our boat trip home we just headed back to our apartment, although I did take a detour to a lake-side walkway in the drizzle. I had to wait for a bridal photoshoot (can you not) but it was rather grey and breezy so didn’t get the best pictures anyway.

Monday was our last full day and we were on a full mission to print our boarding passes for the way home. We flew with Wizz Air and you can only check in for your flight 48 hours in advance (if you don’t want to pay) so we were unable to check in for our return flight before we left. We thought that was no worries, because nowadays you can download boarding passes to your phone, but after checking in it was saying that Ohrid airport didn’t have facilities for online boarding passes and we needed to come with printed copies. Therefore we walked around Ohrid in the rain looking for somewhere to print. We eventually found somewhere, paid our money, and came away with our printed boarding passes!

The weather didn’t really brighten up. It did stop raining but was super windy so we just enjoyed a relaxed afternoon with wine. Nonetheless we had such gorgeous weather on the Saturday that I felt very contented.

On Tuesday we had to head off home (boo) so went down to the main square to get a taxi back to the airport. Honestly this airport was so crap and tiny! Being small doesn’t automatically make an airport bad but this one was just so badly organized! Turned out that they also couldn’t accept our printed boarding passes so we needed to get them printed at the airport anyway! A complete waste of journey around Ohrid in the rain! Oh well!

But so ended our time in Ohrid. It was so affordable to eat out and stay there and the town/lake definitely is gorgeous so we’d definitely recommend to people. Hopefully you get a full set of good weather days but we still managed to do most of what we wanted to do with our shorter window!

For more pics, check out my first post here.