2018.10.23 – Ohrid -Skopje (Macedonia) – Today, we tried a different restaurant as part of our complimentary breakfast. Later, we took a short taxi ride to the bus station which was slightly more than 2kms away. The new and modern bus station was only three months old. The bus ride to Skopje provided some stunning mountain views. Along the way, we detected some cigarette smoke on-board the bus. In an attempt to identify the smoker, I walked the bus aisle a few times but I could not locate the source of the smoke. The same situation repeated itself a bit later. Finally, we discovered that the bus driver was the actual smoker. Jenny politely requested that he stopped smoking – and suggested that he obeyed the sign above his driver’s seat. We realized that we were not the only ones annoyed by the cigarette smoke. A gentleman passenger seated in front of us, living in British Colombia, started to exchange with Jenny while I had a similar exchange with a lady seated behind us, living in the USA. Everyone was pleased that the bus remained smoke free for the rest of our journey to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. We walked the short distance from the bus station to our hotel. In the early evening, we walked through the town center to reach a restaurant we had identified in TripAdvisor. As we walked along the river, we were pleasantly surprised by the nice evening views of the illuminated buildings, statues and fountains, etc When we arrived at the restaurant, Jenny quickly detected cigarette smoke inside the premises. When Jenny asked whether everyone was allowed to smoke inside the restaurant, the owner was quick to reply “Yes – everyone can smoke inside”. We encountered the same situation at the restaurant across the street. We resigned ourselves to eat our evening meal on the deserted (and cool) outside patio – while all the smokers were inside in the warmth of the restaurant. We realized that we took for granted all of the non-smoking environment in North America.

2018.10.24 – Skopje (Macedonia) – After our complimentary breakfast at the hotel, we were somewhat excited to start our sightseeing of the city as we were still under the spell of the previous night’s beautiful scenery. We visited the lively Turkish bazaar where we even bought a pair of slippers. We were looking forward to visiting Skopje’s fortress but we were disappointed when we noticed it’s nothing more than an empty shell. The statues that we enjoyed the previous night were not as nice in the daylight as we could now see all the pigeon poo on them. We returned to our hotel in the mid-afternoon for a rest. Before heading out for our evening meal, Jenny had googled for a smoke-free restaurant. As we arrived at the selected restaurant, we quickly noticed all the smokers inside but we were guaranteed that the upper floor of the restaurant was smoke-free. We had a very enjoyable meal.

2018.10.25 – Skopje (Macedonia) – Thessaloniki (Greece) – As our bus to Thessaloniki, which ran only once each day, was only scheduled to depart at 5:00pm, we opted to visit the National Archaeology Museum after our breakfast. We left our luggage with the hotel’s front desk until we returned from a late lunch at the same restaurant as yesterday. We were thankful that the bus driver knew well the road to Thessaloniki as he was driving quite fast along the twisting mountain roads. The boarder crossing from Macedonia to Greece was one of the fastest and simplest ones on our trip. We arrived at 9:30pm in Thessaloniki. As the bus stopped at the train station, as opposed to the main bus station, it proved to be a more convenient location for us as we managed to walk to our hotel. During hotel check-in, we learned that tomorrow, Friday, was a day of rest in lieu of Sunday’s national holiday. Our room was quite spacious and modern but it was facing the street and with several lively bars nearby, we were subjected to some the loud music.

2018.10.26 – Thessaloniki (Greece) – We were not sure when the music stopped but it was well passed 3am. Our hotel breakfast was promptly served in our room at 9:30am – as requested. We left our hotel for a long self-guided walking tour that brought us to several churches, monasteries and ruins. We felt rather bored by the visit as we felt we had seen much of the same stuff in other trips, namely our visit to Greece in 2014. We were a bit shocked to discover that most cafes were selling their cappuccinos at twice the price that we were paying in the former Yugoslavia countries. After a long afternoon rest at our hotel, we headed out for our evening meal at a traditional Greek tavern. We had some great food at very reasonable prices.

2018.10.27 – Thessaloniki – Athens (Greece) – After our hotel breakfast, we walked to the train station for our 10am train to Athens. The train ride of 5+ hours was the longest commute of our trips. Getting to Athens was critical as we were scheduled to flight back home on Air Transat’s last servicing of Athens for the this year. After arriving in Athens, we walked to our hotel from the train station. We rested in our room for a few hours before heading out to a nearby restaurant for our evening meal.

2018.10.28 – Athens (Greece) – After our breakfast at the hotel, we were-introduced ourselves to Athens’ subway system and bought a 24h pass. We exited the subway at a station near the foot of the Lykavittos hill. We walked up the hill to take in some great views of Athens. It was surprising to see so many people were at the top but then we were reminded that today was Sunday and officially a national holiday. Later we returned to our hotel for a coffee break and some rest. In the mid-afternoon, we opted to take a long tram ride along the seaside. On our return journey, we stopped in the Plaka neighborhood for our evening meal. We ate at a small restaurant we had enjoyed on our previous Greece visit.

2018.10.29 – Athens (Greece) – Ottawa (Canada) – It seemed like yesterday’s national holiday celebrations went on into the wee morning hours. We woke up at 4:30am to take the subway to the airport. We were confronted to a closed gate when we arrived at the nearby subway station. The gate finally opened at 5:20am. The first subway train of the day was very busy with standing room only for the initial part of the journey. Upon our arrival at the airport, we were disappointing to learn that our flight was delayed by 2 hours. We had breakfast at the airport’s McDonald’s restaurant – our first McDonald’s stop of this trip! The 9+ hour flight appeared long as we barely managed any sleep. Upon our arrival at Montreal’s airport, we cleared customs and recovered our backpacks. We bought bus tickets for the 5:35pm ride back to Ottawa. While waiting for the bus, we were thankful we had not bought our tickets ahead of time given our flight delay. After our arrival at the Ottawa bus station, we experienced our first Uber service ride back on. With the cloudy sky and the cool temperature that greeted us home, we already started thinking about next year’s fall trip.