Day 74 - An Ancient City / 4K*

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It still amazes me the amount and variety of food my riding buddies can put away at a Buffet Breakfast. They would consume more than I do in a day (well, almost).
We got away at an acceptable 8:15am with 75kms to travel to our next stop, Plovdiv. Not being a very big town it didn't take us too long to get out of town and begin our only real climb for the day. It was only in the vicinity of 70m and it was done and dusted after 45 minutes riding. From here on, it was all down hill with just a few undulations as it flattened out towards Plovdiv.
The majority of the day was perfect. It was a cloudless sky, the temperature was warm without being too hot, the road surface was good, the traffic was minimal, and the speed was up. We were travelling at an average of 22km/h for most of the day. Again, the scenery was great, perhaps not as great as yesterday, but still worth being out there.
We are still in a Love-Hate relationship with our mapping app (MAPS.ME). About 10kms from Plovdiv we were sent down a very poor and broken concrete road for a couple of kilometers and then a dirt track for another couple of kilometers for no apparent good reason before getting back onto bitumen for the ride into town.
Plovdiv is a big town/city of 350,000 people. What we didn't know was that it contained numerous Roman ruins and artifacts. There was a stadium, a Forum, a Library, aqueducts and many mosaic floors spread across the city. Add to that a very well preserved and presented "Old Town" and I can see why Plovdiv would be tourist destination in Bulgaria. We spent the whole afternoon exploring before having dinner and returning to our apartment.
The other point of note today is I hit 4,000 kilometers in total for the trip, although this does include the kilometers around the towns in our days off, but I guess they all count. We did have a celebratory drink tonight to recognise the achievement. Jeff should reach the milestone tomorrow and Tom won't be far off 2,000kms.
Tomorrow we head to Dimitrovgrad about 79kms away. It's a bit lumpy getting there but the climbs aren't too long.
Distance travelled today: 78kms
Distance travelled so far: 4,025kms

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