(written 9/4/2007)
A bit of a shambles of a morning this one, which Liz will tell you about in person if you ask her.
We grabbed some bread things from street seller for our busy morning, and set off for a wander through town.
We stopped for coffee in the main square of what had obviously once been a fantastically beautify city. The gardens we had walked through to get there were really impressive, but, just like the country's roads, it was obvious that a lot of money was going to be needed to make this place back into what it had once been. There were ruins in the main street, loose paving stones everywhere, but no matter where you looked, happy people all around, with a determination to fix the country in their eyes.
Up to what we thought was internet café, it turned out they were actually an internet provider - at least the girl there could speak enough English to tell me that! But the sign at the front clearly said internet café, which now has a universal meaning. Except in Plovdiv, it seems.
Heading up the hill, we wandered up into the cobbled old town, where most of the buildings were still attractive and had been kept in a decent state of repair. There were plenty of older buildings to see, including a church we had a wander through. Further through the old-town backstreets, we found our way up to the top where we looked over the city and right down into what appeared to be a Roman amphitheater.
Back down the hill to the busiest shopping street, stopping at a street vendor for a fridge magnet, and then found our way slowly back to the car using GPS, which saw us wandering through a nice park.
We drove out heading North, with not a great distance planned for the day's driving. The roads were better than the day before, but still quite terrible - don't every bring a non-rental car here until you have assurance that the roads have improved!
Winding through the country-side between the major cities, Tim kept trying to navigate us around towns, but we just got ourselves stuck back behind the same truck who had gone straight through! On these back-road diversions though, we stumbled across some great Soviet monuments, most of which made little sense to those of us born outside the empire, but the meaning was always pretty clear - Soviet power is the way to go!
We had to get across the Stara Planina, a mountain range cutting across the middle of the country, and to do so we followed a winding pass up for a long time. The roads degraded again, followed closely by the temperature, and before long we were driving through very low visibility fog. Again this was some dangerous driving, although we managed to grab a few photos when it was safe to do so - not of the views, because there were none due to the thick fog.
Down other side and out of the cloud, we pushed further on to
Veliko Tarnovo. This gorgeous little town built into the turn of a river was once the capital of Bulgaria, but now it's at the centre of a property boom for Western Europeans wanting a cheap slice of land to retire on.
We found the i, parked, and went in for a chat. They phoned the new hostel in town
Hikers Hostel to see if their twin room was available, which lucky for us it was. It was held for us, and now the only challenge was to find the place.
After a few tries, we got the car up to right spot on hill through tightly winding alley ways, to a parking spot a little way down from the hostel. From there we walked through the back streets with loose cobbles to the hostel itself.
The place was run by a friendly girl who was genuinely interested in our stories, but eventually we needed to dump our stuff, and wandered down to the old town to have a look around. There we found nice restaurant overlooking the valley, which was obviously not of the traditional style (in keeping with the revitalisation of the town). We ate huge big platefuls of pizza and other food, taking in the amazing views across the valley and the myriad of cultures gathered around us in this popular place.
On our way back to our room, we stopped for a coffee in a café full of young locals, which was a nice change and a way to see how their lives play out.
The famous castle across the other side of the valley runs a lightshow, but only when enough tourists pay money for it to happen. The locals sit there each night waiting for that to happen, but on this particular night it didn't. We hadn't paid so can't really complain, but we intended to explore that place the next day anyway.