louiseinlimbo

One of the main draws of Montenegro is its beautiful scenery – hills, forests, mountains, lakes – so when I received the latest marketing email from a tour company I use frequently with a one-week hiking trip in Montenegro, during this time when I was planning to visit the country, it seemed sensible to sign up for it, especially as the cost was more than covered by the refund I’d received for the cancelled Socotra trip.  I hoped that the Valbona-Theth hike in Albania had helped to prepare me physically for the hiking, and was relieved when I met the other tour group members to see that they were mostly around my age. Before meeting up with them, however, I had a few days to explore some other parts of the country – the capital (Podgorica), and the coastal town of Budva.  Podgorica has little of interest to a tourist, but it bothers me when I visit a country and don’t get to see its capital, so I gave myself a couple of days there – enough to see the sights (a clock tower, a c...

When I finally left Tirana, my first stop was Berat – also known as the ‘city of a thousand windows’.  Not sure that this is a very meaningful description if other windows are like two of the three on my hostel dorm: window frames and panes set onto the front of a brick wall (with no gap in the bricks for windows)!!  But it truly is a beautiful city, dominated by a large castle overlooking it from a hilltop.  Started by the Romans and largely re-built by the Byzantines in the thirteenth century, it contains within its walls a number of Orthodox churches, two Ottoman-era mosques, a museum and of course a number of cafes. From there I moved on to Gjirokaster, another inland city built around an old hilltop fortress, this one even larger as it includes a residential quarter within its walls as well as a former prison and a museum.  Again, there were cultural events in the city – this picture being a group of polyphonic singers on stage in one of the city squares, and ag...

Having seen North Macedonia in two relaxed weeks, I felt that I have more time left than I really need in the Balkans, so after a relaxed week in Tirana, when the hostel owner asked if I’d like to volunteer for a few weeks/months in return for a free bed plus €5 per day subsistence money, I agreed.   The hostel is quite chaotic (on my first full day here, when unfortunately I had gone out exploring so missed the drama, the police came and asked to check everyone’s ID; one guest said he had to go up to his room to get his – and he didn’t come back down.   When the police went up to investigate, they realised he must have jumped off the roof terrace onto an adjoining property and escaped … we found out later the guy was wanted by Interpol!!), sometimes noisy at night, dirty, etc, but owned and managed by a very nice Egyptian guy who I felt comfortable with.   At first it wasn’t that much work – stripping beds when people checked out, putting dirty laundry through the washin...

After a week in and around Skopje, I took the bus down to Ohrid, apparently one of the oldest settlements in Europe.  It’s beside Lake Ohrid, which is one of the oldest lakes in the world, almost certainly the oldest in Europe, and also among the deepest.  It was a lovely area to explore at leisure – with some beautiful views across the lake (still with snow-capped mountains around), and a lot of historical stuff from different periods. To give an idea of that history, this picture above, of the Church of Saints Kliment and Pantelejmon - the world's oldest Slav monastery, with 5th century Roman ruins in the foreground - was taken from Tsar Samoil's fortress, dating from the turn of the 11th century (when this was the capital of the First Bulgarian Empire), but built on the site of an earlier fortification dated to the 4th century BC.  I can't pretend that I even began to get my head around the history in the town - too much for my ageing brain! - but it was all very nice ...

I have to admit that this country was not on my ‘must visit’ list, but having decided to visit Albania before a return visit to the UK in July, it seemed to make sense to also visit the neighbouring countries. I’d heard that North Macedonia – or at least its capital, Skopje – was a strange, rather ‘fake’ place, and could quickly see why it provokes that response.  Situated in an earthquake zone, large parts of it (apparently some 80% of the buildings) were destroyed in a huge earthquake in 1963.  Some of the subsequent re-building was in the modernist, or ‘brutalist’ style, together with plenty of pre-fabricated apartment buildings erected hastily to house those made homeless by the earthquake.  The picture above shows the brutalist Central Post Office and Telecommunications building. But then in 2010, the government launched ‘Skopje 2014’ – a big, expensive, and pretty controversial, project to add some grandeur to the city.  Apparently, more than 120 buildings...

The reason I was in Egypt was actually to take a flight from Cairo to Seiyun, in Yemen, with a tour group. It’s not a country you can visit as an individual, but visas are granted to tour groups meeting specified criteria, so I’d signed up for a tour – a week in mainland south Yemen, followed by a week on the island of Socotra.  Then earlier this year, trouble broke out in Yemen, between the UAE-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council (based in the more northerly part of the country…) and the Saudi-backed and internationally-recognised Presidential Leadership Council (the government), with the former rapidly taking over significant parts of the country but then being pushed back, with the main results being their expulsion from the Leadership Council and the withdrawal of their UAE support.  Thankfully this was all over before my trip was due to take place, so I could still go to ‘southern’ Yemen, but the withdrawal of the UAE included the cancellation of their weekly ...