Bulgaria - Week 25

Monday 3rd December 2018

After hightailing it out of Serbia ...

... we found ourselves in Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria. It was originally a Tracian settlement before becoming a major Roman City. It later fell into Byzantine & Ottoman hands before becoming part of Bulgaria. It’s also Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited city. We loved it and would recommend a visit to anyone. It has plenty of Roman remains including a stadium & amphitheatre, an old town and lots of cobbled streets.

Our first stop was the old town and the Ancient Roman Theatre. We paid the 10 lev to enter (approx £5) and spent more than an hour looking round. It was amazing to just sit there and wonder at how many people had sat in the same spot over the centuries.

The old town was fascinating too with some unusual buildings like the Lamartin House.

We’ve walked on lots of cobbled stones through the countries we’ve visited, but these were something else!

Walking back down the hill and into the shopping area, they were still excavating parts of a Roman Stadium. They’re aim is to make an underground street called the Museum of Ancient Philippopolis, so visitors can see what Plovdiv must have looked like when people like Hadrian ruled the country.

After warming up with a coffee in Costa, and eating our first mince pie of the season, we walked into the Kapana district to look at the street art. What a great place.

We parked in the secure car park for 5 lev per night (approximately £2.40). We even treated ourselves to a meal out. Rabbit Risotto with wild mushrooms and dried tomatoes, complete with Bunny ears lol, BBQ ribs, blueberry cheesecake and a creme brûlée plus drinks ... £16 all in, wow!! It was delicious.

We were overdue a washing day but couldn’t find a launderette. On the park4night app it said there was a place we could take the washing called refresh next to the singing fountain. So after getting a taxi, we dropped 3 bags of washing off and carried on to the old town.

Plovdiv had lots of lovely fresh fruit and vegetable stalls which were all full to bursting with produce. Think we’re going to love Bulgaria!

It’s really lovely to have Rachel at Hymer Eriba as a back up back in England, and after talking to her about the ECU problem in Serbia, she booked us into a Hymer Dealer in Sofia.

So, after collecting all the washing from “Refresh”, all dried and folded beautifully, we drove to the Hymer dealers. They let us park there overnight and even offered us free electric hook up and water. Our contact, Stephanina, was wonderful. Translating everything the mechanic told us and after a cup of coffee and a clean bill of health, we were back on the road again.

Stephanina had recommended that we visit Belogradchik and the Magura Caves, and I had wanted to visit Rila Monastery as it was a UNESCO World Heritage site. So off we went to Rila.

When we set off, the outside temperature was up to 9oC, but by the time we got up into the snow capped mountains, it was -1oC. (I was pleased because Andy was threatening to wear his shorts if it got into double figures lol).

The long and winding road up to it was excellent and well worth the effort.

Lonely Planet said ... Rising out of a forested valley in the Rila Mountains, Bulgaria’s most famous monastery has been a spiritual centre for over 1000 years. Rila Monastery’s fortress-like complex engulfs 8800 sq m, and within its stone walls you’ll find remarkably colourful architecture and religious art. Visitors can’t fail to be struck by its elegant colonnades, archways striped in black, red and white, and the bright yellow domes of its main church, beneath which dance apocalyptic frescoes. All of this splendour, against a backdrop of mist-swirled mountains, has made Rila Monastery hugely popular among both pilgrims and curious visitors ... It really was that good!

There are 3 parking bays just before the entrance where you can park for free or, if you park in the car park, like we did, the attendant asks you for 10 lev. Apart from that it was absolutely free to enter. You could only stay on the ground level as it’s a working Monastery and you were also allowed in the church, but you’re not supposed to take photos inside - whoops!!

We continued on our journey towards Belogradchik. As it was over 170 miles away and because it was getting dark and we were hungry, we pulled over in a car park in Gintsi for the night. By morning the temperature had dropped to -9oC!! Harriet didn’t let us down though. We were cozy inside and nothing had frozen up. After hot showers all round and breakfast, we back on the road.

I love it when Andy’s driving and we can watch the scenery change before our eyes. Andy’s happiest when he’s behind the wheel, so it’s a win win situation. We’re not called truckin’n’lookin for nothing 😉

We reached Belogradchick by a very curly road. In fact we did wonder if it was Bulgaria’s answer to the Trollstigen Pass! The houses and blocks of flats looked run very down. With huge pot holes in the road to negotiate and abandoned cars and lorries parked everywhere, first impressions weren’t good. In fact, so much so, we decided to turn round and head for Magura Caves instead. Andy called Belogradchik a “one eyed town” lol, meaning it was better to look at it with one eye shut.

We were amazed to see the caves open even on a Friday in December. Climbing the steps to the entrance, the lady took 20 lev from us (£9.15), handed us a paper leaflet with a map and turned on the cave lights. She told us to walk 2km to the end and 2km back again. I’m sure in its hay day it must have been a thriving concern, but since it was developed into a tourist attraction in 1961 the place looked as it hadn’t been updated since.

Anyway, even on our own, we managed to find the cave paintings which we’d come to see.

The leaflet said the original pre historic artwork was from the Neolithic, Eneolithic and early Bronze Age. The paintings represented dancing women figures, dancing hunting men, disguised men, large variety of animals, chess boards, suns, stars, tools and plants!!!

On exiting the cave we met a couple of Bulgarian lads who said hello. They asked us if we’d been inside the cave and started chatting to us about the Belogradchik rocks. They made them sound so good we decided to try again. What we needed to do was to put Belogradchik Fortress in to Google Maps and not just the town. So 25km up the road we were parked in the car park.

We’re so glad we didn’t miss this place. Although the light was not very good for taking photos, the views were spectacular!! Neither of us had ever seen anything like it! If we hadn’t known where we were, we could have sworn we were looking at one of the National Parks in America!!
Just fantastic!!

The drive to Veliko Tărnovo was uneventful, apart from coming across a car crash and ending up following a car pulling a small trailer full of pigs around the back streets to get past the altercation.

We arrived in Veliko Tărnovo around 7pm so stopped at a McDonalds for food (if you can call it that) and to use their free WiFi to download some more TV from Netflix to watch later.

Romania & Serbia - Week 24

We couldn’t come all this way without visiting Bran castle, the alleged home of Dracula. Loved it! Loved all the secret passages and all the information boards that were written in English as well as Romanian. A must visit castle in our opinion.

My boss has a dentist called Vlad. She calls him Vlad the descaler lol.

We drove back to Sibiu that evening as we’d had a message that the courier had delivered the paperwork we were waiting for.

When we entered Romania over a week ago, we were driving on a motorway. Not knowing the roads we stayed on it. It was pretty boring, just flat brown landscape for miles. Then, at one point, we were diverted onto a normal main road, as that part of the motorway was still under construction. The road deteriorated quite a bit but when, like us, you’ve driven on Lithuanian roads and use them as a bench mark, it wasn’t that bad. We were glad to get back on the motorway though later on. Luckily the road from Bran & Sighisoara to Sibiu was a decent road.

Driving through all these countries, you do notice the differences between them. Apart from all the stray dogs, litter (so much litter) and idiotic drivers that were about, what stood out the most, were the amount of flocks of sheep being looked after by shepherds. Wow what a boring job to have, standing around watching sheep nibble grass all day.

The villages looked very poor in places, with crumbling and derelict buildings in amongst some that you could see were looked after. All of them though, were painted in different colours and quite a few of the towns and villages had Romanian flags flying from every lamp post. They were obviously proud to be Romanian.

Arriving back in Timisoara, we (meaning Andy), negotiated the crazy traffic and called in to collect the paperwork at Autoklass. We must say a huge thanks to Rachel at Hymer Eriba for sorting this out for us.

We slept in the same secure car park and visited the same Starbucks to upload last weeks blog.

Before leaving Timisoara, we stopped at Lidl to stock up on essentials as we were heading for Serbia (for the second time). A guy pulled up in the car park next to us and said hello. He was Romanian but had lived & worked in London for 15 years. He’d spotted that Harriet was a right hand drive vehicle so wanted to talk to us and ask how we found his city. Told him we thought it was good but the traffic was crazy. He agreed and laughed.

We’d already downloaded the offline map of Serbia as our EE contract doesn’t include internet for the country & google maps has been an excellent sat nav so far.

So, Drum Bun Romania, farewell.

We headed for Novi Sad and as we arrived at the Romanian border, we handed the guard the V5 & passports and after checking them he let us through. We crossed the 200m of No Mans Land and had to do it all over again at the Serbian border. This time a lovely border guard asked if he could look inside. His English was excellent and after 2 minutes looking around the van he was happy and said thank you. We had an entry stamp in both passports and were on our way. Not only had we crossed the border but we’d crossed another time zone - again! This time gaining an hour.
Further down the road we found a garage selling LPG. The pump attendant ran inside to get his colleague when he found out we were English. What a lovely man he turned out to be. He’d been learning the English language in the hope of getting to Australia. He filled Harriet with gas for us (Andy usually does it himself), and told us that his English lessons cost him €10 an hour and his salary is only €250 a month. He’s got 2 children but only 1 wife lol. He seemed genuinely pleased to practice his English.

We carried on to Novi Sad passing lots of farmers fields covered in a couple of inches of snow. It’s the first of the white stuff we’d seen since leaving the Arctic circle.

We parked in the castle car park and the next morning, after making a chilli for later, we went into town. We needed to get some Serbian Dinars from an ATM.

Novi Sad is a nice town. Nothing really special but better than places we saw in Romania. It was strange though that every third or forth shop was a currency exchange. But when we tried to change some Romanian notes they didn’t want to know.

There was a small Christmas market in the centre of town just like many others we’ve seen.

The following morning, we walked around the fortress in the sunshine.

Leaving Novi Sad we headed for Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The traffic going into the centre was horrendous but we found our camping spot outside the Yugoslavian Museum. We spent a quiet night there but struggled without internet. Having no paper maps or guide books we had no clue which way to go. We walked to the train station but the trains didn’t go any further into the city. It was cold and I felt pretty miserable. So it was decided we would head back to Harriet and visit the museum. Feeling a bit happier, we walked back up the hill. Problem was, the museum was closed for repairs. Defeated, we set off for Nis.

The main route through Serbia is a motorway and as it gets dark early at this time of year, a good road to drive. We pulled in to a service station with a McDonalds for a break and to use their free WiFi. Getting back in Harriet, the unthinkable happened, she wouldn’t start. It wasn’t the battery as the engine turned over fine, it just wouldn’t fire up. We did notice the amber management light on the dash though.

Serbia is one of the few countries where there isn’t any Fiat Assist, so Andy went to ask for help at the fuel station and 20 minutes later, a recovery truck turned up.

The mechanic told us there was a problem with the ECU and would have to be recovered to a garage to be plugged in.

So, not having any option we agreed. By the end of the evening, and quite a bit of money lighter, Harriet fired up and we were back on the road.

We slept on the motorway services that night and in the morning drove 270 miles into Bulgaria as we weren’t 100% sure it had been repaired. We didn’t want the headache of it happening again with no Fiat Assist as a backup.