We had a bit of trouble finding the bus and getting tickets to this attraction. The information we found online is either out of date since everything changed 2 years ago, or confusing. Here is how we got to the cross. Please note this was in February 2020, the off-season. It’s possible this will be different in the summer months.
We bought the bus tickets at a little green kiosk on 11th October St. near Zena Park in the center of town. It was hard to find this kiosk as it’s set back from the sidewalk and blocked by a larger kiosk. The GPS coordinates are: 41.9920184, 21.4335059. The Moovit App is also useful for finding it.
We wanted to purchase tickets for the bus and cable car, but the woman at the kiosk either didn’t understand us or they weren’t offering this package anymore. She sold us 1 card for the bus for 200 MKD (3.60 USD) and said we had 5 trips. This was confusing because there were 3 of us. Could we all use the same card? Was it 5 one way or 5 round trips. Would there be a place to buy 1 more one way trip at the other end, in case we needed to?
We went across the street to the bus stop and waited for bus #25. We waited about 20 minutes and learned the next bus was still 40 minutes away. We gave up for the day and went to a museum.
The next day, we caught bus 25 at a stop a bit closer to our Airbnb on the west side of town. We swiped the card and it beeped for the first person, but we couldn’t get it to swipe for the other 2 of us. Then we realized it’s Saturday and no one else was swiping a card. We had read the bus was free on weekends in the summer and apparently it was in the winter too.
The bus followed a windy steep road half way up the mountain where we got off. I was expecting the cable car to be a sketchy looking old soviet style rust bucket, but it was a really nice new Dopplemayr lift. There we bought tickets to the cable car and rode the rest of the way up. You don’t have to ride the cable car, or the bus even as a lot of people were walking on the road and there are trails to the top as well. Many people were riding the cable car up with mountain bikes too. You can even para-glide down from the top.
There are beautiful views of the city and the surrounding mountains and valleys from the top. There is a snack bar and a restaurant as well as many picnic tables and sitting areas on the top. This is definitely a worth while thing to do while visiting Skopje.
I hope this information has been helpful. Please leave a comment if you have more information about getting the bus up to the cable car, or anything else pertaining to this tourist attraction.
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Sounds a little bit like Mount Washington in our beloved New Hampshire, but even more likee the Puy de Dome in Clermont-Ferrand, France, which has the remains of a Roman temple to Mercury and many paragliders and bicyclists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puy_de_D%C3%B4me
I hope all is well with you both. I don’t think we are going to get any compensation for LV2626, do you? My next trip – the Netherlands.
We are still hoping for some compensation. They said it would be another month until we hear more.
Have a great time in the Netherlands!
Let me know if anything happens with the compensation, and I will do the same. Vincent said he did get compensated by kiwi.com, but he had to buy a new ticket from Boston to Lyon. And kiwi is a travel agency instead of a Potemkin village of an airline established solely to kill Norwegian Air Shuttle.