Belle Ville Plovdiv

I am going to start with the gawry bits first as a warning to anyone who reads this.

1. Be wary of hotels.com as they told us we had paid for our room when we booked and we subsequently got chased by the Guesthouse after we had left - for nonpayment! Thankfully they had our email address so did not have to call the Police to track us down! Everything seemed to be resolved but took several days, lots of emails and many hours until we found it wasn't and ...

... to explore the old town by 1900. After that I went back to the train station and looked for a place to eat. I found it but its menu was in Bulgarian only. Luckily Maria on the next table helped me to order some salad, soup and fish and a bottle of wine, so we had a nice conversation while sharing the wine. She is a drummer from Plovdiv but living in Vienna now. We talked about politics ...

9th June
Rila Monastery to Plovdiv
Sunny 31 degrees

We left the lovely Rila Monastery to drive to Plovdiv. It involved some backtracking to near Sofia and then on to the motorway to Plovdiv. Unfortunately, once again, the area is very smoggy and spoils what would be lovely views of the countryside and mountains. We arrived in Plovdiv and found our hotel ...

... hostel were really vague (no streets had any signage) and so we spent a bit of time trying to find someone who could speak some English to point us in the right direction. Just as we thought we were going to have to jump in a taxi we found a guy outside the station from Abu Dahbi who was in Plovdiv visiting family. He walked with us through town until we found some landmarks that corresponded with our directions - he was really nice and didn't want anything for helping us which was excellent ...

Saturday 16th May. We packed up and were on the road reasonably early and headed towards the border of Croatia where we crossed the border and drove through past Zagreb and towards Serbia. All was good and roads were fine though we had to pay tolls along the motorways we soon added up but it was a quicker way to drive there than the free regional roads. At the border of Serbia things got interesting as the border controls insisted we had to pay insurance as they said ...

... There were about 5 or 6 lovely young Irish ladies in there whom we were enjoying talking to, though James had developed an irrepressible case of wandering hands. After several warnings and being shoved away by the girls, he still couldn't seem to control himself and eventually succeeded in annoying them so much that they left the pub. Bereft of any other females clientele on whom he could lavish his attention, James then directed his version of affection to the female barstaff ...

... like a bunch of daft kids! The countryside was lovely very picturesque, all flat plains and fields and fields of sunflowers. Although I did have a bit of a scare when I thought there was a wildfire happening, but then I noticed the earth piled up at the edges of the other fields and realised they were just doing a bit of clearing. A few other oddities were seeing both old men going about their business in the little towns and villages we passed through by horse and cart ...

... deserted atmosphere of Veliko Tarnovo, it's nice to be surrounded by people again. The street ends in a square with a fountain and too many banks, and I head back to the hostel for lunch. In the afternoon, I travel out to Bachkovo monastery with two girls from northern Alberta. The monastery is the second largest in the country and 1,000 years old. Approaching it, up a valley between more magnificent hills, we pass numerous stalls selling food and souvenirs ...

... of the exhibits were of 19th century technology; plows, farm tools, scythes, pots, an anvil, clothing, a tea pot. A lady was making doilies in a section of the house. We did enjoy the ottoman houses as we walked through old Plovdiv. These are the charm of the city. I had a lot of fun trying to shoot photos of them. The sun was out but so many streets are too narrow to get all of a building in one shot. Most of them have some sort of wooden exterior. Dozens of them have ...

... I felt my pockets, then looked at the locked zipper on my knapsack. Then I remembered I donīt use drugs. The entire trainload of perhaps 100 people were paraded into the lightless building and told to form a line. Standing in this cold, dark room I began to realize that living the vicarious life of a secret agent isn't all its cracked up to be. Then a light came on from inside an adjoining area. A curtain was pulled aside and behind a counter sat a squat, olive skinned ...