I Traveled Via Time With My Household within the Coronary heart of Macedonia

The rain had soaked via my jacket and into my boots by the point my buddy Rachel and I reached Sveti Jovan Kaneo, a Thirteenth-century church within the North Macedonian city of Ohrid. Our husbands and youngsters had stayed behind on the lodge, however we hustled a half mile via a late-spring storm towards the octagonal dome that sat atop a weathered brick constructing. After opening the gate, we got here to a big wood door, solely to search out it locked tight. 

As we turned to depart, defeated, Rachel observed a priest arriving on the gate. He unlocked the door, we stepped in, and I instantly gasped. I’ve seen lots of church buildings, however this one was properly definitely worth the journey. 

Gentle filtered via skylights and cross-shaped cutouts on the partitions, illuminating frescoes within the domed ceiling and gilded icons across the room. The priest identified Biblical tales depicted within the intricate artwork. Christianity will not be my faith, however because the rays glinted off the gold, making the figures come alive, I understood how locations like this created believers. After we requested if we might take photos, the priest pointed to an indication forbidding images. Then he shrugged, maybe pondering higher of it. “Reminiscences are vital,” he mentioned.

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His response felt sage in Ohrid, a city that carries a lot historical past. It sits on the shore of Lake Ohrid, which straddles the border of North Macedonia and Albania. In 2023, scientists found an 8,000-year-old stilt village, believed to be the oldest of its form in Europe, submerged close to the water’s edge. The lake is nearly 2 million years outdated and a UNESCO World Heritage website, partly due to its distinctive biodiversity. 

Whereas excavations of the underwater village are ongoing, present-day Ohrid seems like a window into an earlier time. Throughout our journey, our kids climbed the help posts of the 1,000-year-old tree that stands within the city sq. to pose for a photograph. We stopped on the Nationwide Workshop for Handmade Paper to listen to concerning the craft as practiced by native monks within the sixteenth century, and acquired the children gelato from a store within the Ottoman-era bazaar, a pedestrian avenue main up from the port that comes alive within the early night. 

Ohrid is alleged to have as soon as had 365 church buildings, one for every day of the 12 months. Our lodge, the Jovanovic Visitor Home (doubles from $52), was throughout the road from the Eleventh-century Sveta Sofija. (Sveti, or sveta for the female, means sacred or saint in a number of Slavic languages.) When the Ottoman Empire took management of the area within the fifteenth century, the constructing was transformed right into a mosque and the church’s paintwings had been coated up. Within the mornings, we stared out at it from our balcony, as we ate a conventional breakfast of cheese pie and do-it-yourself yogurt.

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After a couple of days of exploring, we wished to get out onto Lake Ohrid. Guidebooks, and an Web full of people that had clearly visited in excessive season, described a pier filled with boats. However on a humid Sunday afternoon through the spring shoulder season, no such fleet appeared. So as a substitute, I reached out to a tour firm I discovered on-line. 

“You solely have tomorrow obtainable?” Nikola Martinoski of B&F Cruise Ohrid responded, nearly instantly. “Tuesday will probably be sunny.” However we had been leaving on Tuesday, so after checking that situations could be secure sufficient, Martinoski instructed us to satisfy him the following morning on the seashore. 

After breakfast, we boarded the coated pontoon boat and headed south, passing Vila Biljana, one of many many nation retreats of then-president Josip Broz Tito when this space was nonetheless a part of Yugoslavia. Nowadays, North Macedonian officers summer time there as a substitute. 

We additionally zipped by the thatched-roof huts on the Bay of Bones. These replicate a 3,000-year-old village—a youthful sibling of the subaquatic settlement presently being excavated. They’re a part of the Museum on Water, which re-creates life within the Neolithic interval via artifacts recovered from beneath the lake’s floor.

On the monastery Sveti Naum, about 20 miles south of town, the youngsters lit candles, then cooed on the geese and turtles roaming the shore as we walked again to the boat. For lunch, we headed north to Restaurant & Terrace Uno (entrées $6–$15), the place we ordered 4 totally different sorts of fish—no matter that they had caught that morning, we ate. Earlier than our trout was grilled, the waiter introduced it to our desk, demonstrating its freshness by mentioning its silver pores and skin. We had the fish with plates of tomato-and-feta salad, thick slices of bread, pickled peppers, and tavče gravče, the ubiquitous nationwide dish of beans in a clay pot.

As predicted, the solar got here out on Tuesday. Whereas my husband went mountain biking with a information via the foothills of Galičica, the mountain that divides Lake Ohrid and its neighbor, Lake Prespa, I drove my daughters to the village of Elshani. I organized with Risto’s Visitor Home (set menu $10) for a donkey journey earlier than settling in for a do-it-yourself meal of leek bread and hen, accompanied by tavče gravče (at all times), cherry juice, and walnut cookies. 

From excessive within the hills, the lake seemed a gleaming blue; on the way in which again to city, we stopped at a seashore for a more in-depth take a look at the clear water. Whereas I took photographs, my youngsters pretended to catch fish with sticks—the type of sport, it struck me, that youngsters might have performed on that very spot 8,000 years in the past. After a couple of moments, I prodded the children to get within the automotive, as a result of we had an extended drive into neighboring Albania that afternoon. However once they complained, I allow them to preserve enjoying, reminding myself of what the priest had mentioned: recollections are, certainly, vital. 

A model of this story first appeared within the April 2025 subject of Journey + Leisure beneath the headline “Treasures of the Deep.”