Our room in Berat was lovely, we had a pillow top bed which made such a welcome change from the hard beds of Greece and a big veranda overlooking the river. As breakfast was included with our room we went back to the terrace when we woke up and were given the largest breakfast you could imagine. At one stage we took a photo thinking that was all of it, only for more food to arrive at our table. There were omelettes, sausages, bread, toast, tomatoes, cucumber, various cheeses and more and M is always pretty happy when he is served cake for breakfast. Our lovely room and breakfast cost only 30 euros (about $48).
After taking a walk across the river after breakfast we took to the rough Albanian roads again, driving through the mountains to the Macedonian border. Albania seems to be under construction, there are buildings and roads being worked on everywhere. The majority of the cars we have seen on the roads are either Mercedes or VWs, there aren't many other makes on the road.
We passed some stalls of colourful artificial flowers and just around the corner were the brightest and most colourful cemeteries we had ever seen, it seemed as if every tombstone was decorated with the artificial flowers.
At one point we passed a convoy of black cars led by a police car and other cars with flashing lights, it looks like someone important was coming through and making sure everyone knew he was on his way.
We knew we needed to buy a Green Card on the Albanian side to allow us to take the car into the other countries and just before the border we found a roadside stand. We had been told the Green Card would be €30 but for some reason we were charged €40. We drove onto the border to find there were many places to buy the card, so perhaps we could have got it cheaper.
The border crossing was uneventful and we hoped the road would improve on the Macedonian side. It certainly seemed that there were more patches as we drove through to Ohrid.
We knew Orhid was on Lake Orhid and we expected some sleepy lakeside village, instead we found ourselves in a town with a mass of tourists and narrow cobbled streets. Finding where we were staying, where to park the car and someone who spoke English to help us through all this was quite a challenge but eventually we were sorted.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the lake area with the other tourists but feeling like we were the only English speaking tourists in town. We couldn't really work out where the other tourists were from, were they just other Macedonians? We tried to buy a Macedonian sim but couldn't find one anywhere, so maybe we were the only foreigners.
Dinner was a little strange as every table was served a bowl of what appeared to be tomato sauce and people used a spoon to smear it over their pizza, spaghetti carbonara or whatever they were eating.
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