Stupid Things Tourists Say

Europe
July 26th 2018

Published: July 26th 2018

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ClairesTravel

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Sun flower fields

We woke up in Vidin (Veeden) Bulgaria; actually, when we went to bed, we were already there. Guess what, we woke up early like we do every day and headed to breakfast right as it opened. Our tour didn’t start until 9am so we checked news and email then boarded the bus to the Belogradchik Rocks, one of the natural wonders of Bulgaria. Vidin is the poorest city in the EU and you could tell it. After the fall of communism, a ton of the factories in this area closed. We drove by factory after factory that looked like it was from an apocalyptic movie. They could surely film one here. Some factories looked like they had been agricultural based, others more manufacturing based and then others looked like office buildings. Wow. We then drove out of the city and thru a bunch of sunflower fields. We passed another small town, then we arrived in Belogradchik (little Belgrade). We stopped here for some refreshments one of which was a sweet light cookie that both Susan and I loved. From here, you could get a good view of the rocks in the area. We then headed to the fortress. This is where

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view of the rocks from a distance

we heard one of the passengers ask the guide, “do they have roads in Bulgaria that run from the north to the south?”. And then another passenger asks her “we took this much money out of the ATM. How much is it?”. Really you will go to an ATM and take out money and you don’t know the exchange rate?

The Romans used the Belogradchik Rocks to help build a fortress around 100 AD. The fortress looked in good condition, but unfortunately, they were setting up the area for a concert. We couldn’t get unobstructed views, but we did get some good views of the rocks and walls of the fortress. We climbed the stairs up to the top to get a better view where we could see the slots in the walls for arrows and later guns. One of the other passengers stated, “those are the holes for the cannons”. Yea right, first they didn’t have cannon during the Roman era and 2^nd, if they did, that would have to be a very small cannon (about the size of a gun). Ha, ha.

We climbed back down and went out by the entrance to the vendors that

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the small town near the rocks

were set up. Susan and I both bought a local artist’s watercolor of the area. We then got back on the bus for the return trip. During this portion we saw a stork’s nest high on a post. Once we got back into town, the bus took us on a tour of Vidin. Even though Vidin is poor, there were areas of the town that looked very well kept and lively. We hadn’t seen any of this on our journey out. We saw the pedestrian walkway with the shopping area, the old synagogue, some of the churches, and drove near the castle. We were then dropped off at the ship where we went on board and had lunch. It started to rain as the crowd was trying to get back on board and we got a little wet.

After lunch Susan and I got the map (given to us by the ship) and headed out into town. We first tried to find the pedestrian mall. The map was not making sense. Well first off, the map used the Latin spelling for the road names. The street signs were in Cyrillic. That didn’t help but the roads were not lining

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view from the town

up. We eventually figured out that where the map said we were docked was a few streets away from where we really were. Finally, the map wasn’t truly to scale. To say the least, we wondered around the city a bunch before figuring out where we were. During all this there was a light rain, but this time we were prepared and had our umbrellas. We did find the pedestrian mall and walked thru it and then we walked thru some of the neighborhoods as we tried to make our way over to the park. The sun was out and the steam from the rain really made it hot but once we found the park, we had some shade along with a nice breeze. We then walked thru the park for about 20 minutes and arrived at the castle. This castle was 1000 years old and in excellent condition. We walked around the outside and had hoped to get inside but they only took local currency and we didn’t have any. This turned out to be a good thing. Why? We started to hear thunder. By this time my knees were really starting to complain, and we knew we had

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part of the path we had to hike

a 20-minute walk back to the ship. The clouds turned dark, the downdrafts started but really felt good but oh how I wanted to just rest the knees for a minute and Susan her ankle. We pushed thru and made it back to the ship, right as the sky opened up. Others were not so lucky.

After a short rest, we got ready for dinner and then went up to hear the debarkation instructions for Friday and then the overview of what was going to happen tomorrow. Then we went to dinner. We sat with a family from the Dallas area. The parents and their 2 grown daughters were at our table and Susan and I agree, it was the best conversation we have had with a group on the ship. After dinner, we went to the lecture on Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) and then retired.

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