Blogs from Bulgaria, Europe - page 6

The original plan today was to go on a narrow gauge railway, but upon further investigation I realised it was a 10 hour round trip and much of it goes through scenery we have already driven through. Plan B was a half hour drive to Sapareva Banyans, where a bunch of women were blocking the road rollerskiing and making it look like hard work. From there we drove up to the Rila Mountains towards Seven Lakes, which are glacial lakes situated between 2,100 and 2,500 metres above sea level. Glyn had though that as we were hiking to lakes, that it would be flat, ha ha, he was wrong! On the way up, Glyn stopped so we could do a Pokémon raid in a woodland walk where naff fairytale character paintings were nailed to trees. They ... read more

The cruel practice of forcing bears to dance for entertainment was banned in Bulgaria in 1998 and now the rescued bears need somewhere to live. Thus the badly named 'Dancing Bear Park' started in Belitsa. The bears no longer have to dance, but instead have huge enclosures in thick forest where they can please themselves. They can't go back in the wild because they don't know how to look after themselves and would not get on with the 450-600 wild bears still living in the national parks. Because of the mountains, everywhere is a long drive away, so we decided to make it more of a 'photographic, leisurely drive', like a Sunday afternoon drive only on a Thursday morning. The majority of the journey was thick forests of fir trees or snowy mountains in the distance. ... read more

Mountains generally have a variety of routes up that are labelled for the competency of the climbers. In the Rila Mountains, Glyn and I needed the incompetent route but ended up on the complete and utter numpty path. There's no mountain rescue in the Rila Mountains that I could see. Not even a map or sign telling you how far it is to the top (yes I know we could google it but where's the fun in that?) The weather forecast for today in Borovets was sunny, so Glyn and I decided to take the gondola up to Yastrebets and then take a hike to Mount Musala. Nothing like the gondolas in Venice, these cable cars are for carting skiers and snowboarders up to ski slopes. At 12 lev each return (£6), it wasn't much to ... read more

Bulgaria day 4: Sofia, graffiti, a cemetery and a lost car park Today I got shouted at. I have no idea what they said. Maybe they were angy at England’s victory in the World Cup last night... But more of that anon. It keeps you reading and gives you something to look forward to. We had originally planned to visit Plovdiv and just do half a day in Sofia before we fly but, again, some idiot has stuck a mountain between us and Plovdiv so we went for the closer option. Plovdiv had also sounded more appealing but Claire found some things ‘off the beaten track’ in Sofia that sounded interesting so we headed there. We found somewhere to park by a Metro station where it was Park and Ride....and then we walked. It’s only 34 ... read more

HE SAID... Today we were travelling south from Bucharest in Romania to Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria. We headed down to breakfast in the hotel dining room, where I gathered a small feast of muesli, cranberries, dates, yoghurt, warm bread, jam, pastries and fruit tea. We also made some bread rolls with cheese and salami and smuggled them into our bags for the train trip to Veliko Tarnovo. Feeling refreshed, we gathered our packs and headed out onto the street, where we jumped onto a tram and headed to Bucharest’s railway station. We picked up some bracelets and a pendant with our remaining Romanian currency at a small stall, then jumped onto the train and found a spare six-berth cabin which we shared with four others. Before we knew it we were chugging out of the station ... read more