Wine and Roman ruins

Tuesday
Having spent the night at Popova Kula winery hotel, we had asked about taking a tour of the winery, but the person doing the tour is also the person manning reception, so we had to do it before breakfast, before people were wanting to check out. Unfortunately the tour turned out to be rather short and a bit disappointing. Breakfast was in the sun-bathed summer terrace of the dining room affording extensive views over the vineyards and the village, and included a large bunch of grapes.
Having checked out and taken some pictures around the hotel, we went in search of the Elenov winery, home to the royal winery and vineyards of the former Yugoslav King Alexandar Karadjordjevic and his royal family, and claiming to be the oldest winery in the Balkans. We could see where it should be on the map, and found this place surrounded by a wall and with iron gates, but there was no name or anything to tell you what it was. We saw a guy walking inside, so Roger got out to ask, and it was indeed the winery. We couldn't help but think they would get more business if they had a sign outside! Anyway we had a very friendly guy give us a personal and comprehensive tour - in Macedonian, so poor Laura was stuck with doing her best at translating. We saw the Queen's palace - in need of some restoration - they're trying to raise money to turn it into a restaurant, several cellars, one of which used to be the stables, and another held some of the original huge oak barrels. There were peacocks, several of them with babies wandering around everywhere and several antique pieces of wine-making machinery. We finished with a wine-tasting in a lovely room with comfortable sofas.
Then we went on to the second part of my title and the subject of my photograph - the Roman ruins of Stobi. The site is located on the main road that leads from the Danube to the Aegean Sea, and is considered by many to be the most famous archaeological site in the Republic of Macedonia. Stobi was built where the Erigón river (modern day River Crna) joins the Axiós river (modern day Vardar), making it important strategically as a center for both trade and warfare. The ruins include some beautiful mosaics. The ones I have shown are from the baptistry of the Episcopal Basilica, dating from the 5th and 6th centuries. The peacock depicted is used on the reverse of the Macedonian 10 denars banknote, issued in 1996, and of the 10 denars coin, issued in 2008. We had an interesting guided tour (fortunately for Laura in English!). It would have been nice to explore it a bit more but it was early afternoon by now and extremely hot (this is one of the hottest parts of the country), so we decided to go find somewhere to have lunch. It made sense to find another winery, as many of them have restaurants, so we chose the nearby Stobi winery, which we were disappointed with as it turned out to be a big modern industrial -like winery, and the restaurant we felt was geared toward clients and hence more international in nature and lacking character. After lunch we did a bit more local sightseeing then headed back to Laura's home in Kicevo