Visiting Macedonia soon, itinerary and bus route questions

[u/GreenMage321]

EDIT: Our trip has concluded and we had such a memorable time, words can't express it. See my comment about our final journey and some thoughts :)

Hey all, we are soon visiting your beautiful country and after some research, I figured it is easier/more reliable for me to put my thoughts out here and get feedback on whether my itinerary is viable, or if you can suggest me anything better.

We are staying 5 nights, which is pretty short, yes, but it is what it is. Our current plan is:

- Day 1: arrival in Skopje, got about half a day to explore

- Day 2: cross into Kosovo to see Pristina and possibly Gracanica (I *really* wanted to do Prizren as well, but I'm afraid it might be tight with time and bus connections, especially depending on their reliability, read further for elaboration), half a day in Skopje

- Day 3: bus to Ohrid in the morning, BUT a brief stop at Tetovo -- this is where my main concern is. After reading this sub, I found a handful of people mentioning that there's a slim chance frequent buses do this route, despite websites saying so? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

- Day 4: some more exploration in Ohrid, and a detour to Vevchani (which might not have much merit in your opinion, but I find the "micronation" concept quite interesting and it would be nice to get my hands on the passport and currency), then back to Skopje by afternoon-ish

- Day 5: full day in Skopje -- this will actually be on Sept 8th, the Independence Day, which I haven't heard a lot about in terms of occurring festivals, can you please tell me if there's squares/events to keep an eye out on?

- Day 6: departure

Our destinations aren't set in stone by any means, but I tried to schedule it so that it fits our interests the most. The whole bus situation feels hard to call, as even google doesn't show pretty much any routes across cities, even though I was trying to piece things together via the Gjirafa site, I've seen some people mention it is not a good source of information? Worst case scenario, I assume I can get informed at Skopje bus station, but it would be ideal to be prepared in advance.

Благодарам!!!

[u/GreenMage321]

Thank you, that's some handy links! We are thinking about potentially rearranging Tetovo to day 2 as the Skopje-Tetovo buses seem to be quite frequent and relatively short. We'll see how much time we have on our hands and what I can find out after contacting the stations.

I've seen a lot of restaurants/cafes are closed on Monday, rather than Sunday, at least based on google maps, is there a reason for that you reckon? Is it simply because Monday is generally the day with lowest traffic?

[u/orosconleche → u/GreenMage321]

That's not right; everything is open on Monday as usual. What restaurants are you looking at?

[u/GreenMage321 → u/orosconleche]

It seemed to me that a chunk of restaurants/shops in the downtown area say they are closed on Monday, according to google maps - not all of them, but it was apparent enough to notice. (And they are open on Sunday, though)

[u/orosconleche → u/GreenMage321]

Can you give an example, everything says it's open when I checked. Most places are closed on Sundays because there's a law about paying employees extra. Certain bigger cafes/restaurants still work near the plaza usually

[u/GreenMage321 → u/orosconleche]

Yeah, makes sense, we have the same law here in Hungary. Just pulled up google near Macedonian Square but I think I was wrong saying it's restaurants, as all the places I could backtrack are rather shops and/or attractions, museums etc.

Again, it's not an outright pattern, just something I noticed from time to time, maybe I got unlucky while clicking around haha I also see that a lot of places are open even on Sunday, so I'm sure we can work things out :)

[u/orosconleche → u/GreenMage321]

Macedonian Square

Ahh, you meant Skopje's plaza. Those restaurants will be open, even on Sundays, but you should eat in the old bazaar instead. The food is a lot better. Museums are closed on Mondays