Aug 6th, Skopje Center

8/6       Tuesday

      Tuesday is our traditional Walk to Bus Station day, to get our tickets for the next journey. We book our seats for next week, a four-hour ride to Sophia, Bulgaria. It’s not a difficult walk from the apartment. If we have any trouble getting a taxi, we’ll be able to get there on foot with our packs.

We walk back to the main plaza along the river path. The city is notable for all the statues and monuments. There are figures all along the bridges, at every main corner fountains, Tsars, Monks, Saints, men in suits, men on horseback, men in suits on horseback, rearing stallions, roaring lions, Mother Theresa, just about everything. At the city center, there’s a gigantic fountain statue, called The Warrior, but everyone assumes it’s Alexander the Great. The fountain waters make a grand performance to dramatic background music. The fountain is ringed with giant lions, which spit sprays of water at soldiers circling the base of the fountain, fending off the spitting lions with spears and swords. The first tier of the fountain rains down water while sprays surge up from the pools below. The whole decorated column is topped by a massive statue of a warrior on a rearing stallion, holding a sword high over his head. It is quite dramatic.

We see a couple icons for cinemas on our tourist maps, so we decide to walk around the city to find them. There’s a modern mall off the plaza. We walk through to the far end and find a movie theater. One down, one to go. The other is somewhere off the main pedestrian avenue. We walk along past the Mother Theresa Center, built on the site of her original home. We’ll have to visit that later. We circle around the map location, and finally ask a waiter if she knows where the movies are. She points us in the right direction, down the street to another great big mall. It’s even bigger and more modern than the last, and only a few blocks from our apartment. We find the cinema, and then take advantage of the big supermarket to get groceries for dinner.

 1 Video Included

Skopje Center