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<li class="cat-item cat-item-17434"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/2wanderers/category/around-canada" >Around Canada</a> (5)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-17436"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/2wanderers/category/around-canada/at-home" title="Blog posts about things around Edmonton.">At Home</a> (2)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-17412"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/2wanderers/category/cairo-to-budapest-and-beyond" title="Our big one. In 2006, we travelled overland from Egypt to Hungary, plus some stops in Malta, France and the UK.">Cairo to Budapest and Beyond</a> (51)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-23178"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/2wanderers/category/ecuador" title="Our first real trip after the big 5 month jaunt, we took a winter holiday off to see Ecuador.">Ecuador</a> (12)
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[4] => <li class="cat-item cat-item-23178"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/2wanderers/category/ecuador" title="Our first real trip after the big 5 month jaunt, we took a winter holiday off to see Ecuador.">Ecuador</a> (12) </li>
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Sorry for the delays in posting; at first we were feeling a little lazy (and under the weather), and then internet proved to be a difficult find in the rural parts where we’ve been hanging out for the past week or so.
Our time in Romania has been pretty good, thus far, but there have been a few frustrations, mostly because it’s high season, and trying to do anything results in lineups.
We’ve realised that it’s impossible to know in advance what’s going to be a major tourist attraction. We visited three castles in the Basov area. The first was Bran Castle, which had recieved the Dracula treatment from the marketing department, despite having no relation to either the book, or the historical king Vlad Tepes (the Impalor), commonly referred to in the guidebooks as the “real” Dracula (His only relation is the name “Draculea,” meaning “Son of the Dragon,” since his father was a knight in the Order of the Dragon). So, unsurprisingly that one was pretty busy. Despite the marketing treatment, though, the castle didn’t pretend to be anything it wasn’t, it was a museum of old artifacts, furnishings and the like.
Warning: what follows may come accross as a bit whiny. Sorry. If that bothers you, stop here. The fact is, it hasn’t been the best week, so most of it’s just recounting all the various problems we had.
We’ve spent the past week or so being very frustrated. It started in Veliko Tarnovo, which was a beautiful city, where the hostel we were staying in claimed to offer day tour to the surrounding area, but couldn’t take us because they “needed to car for pickups (from the bus station),” something they do most days, and we didn’t actually see the car move all day anyway. Then we went to Varna, which isn’t the most interesting town, but we’d wanted to see a bit of the Black Sea coast. (which we didn’t actually do in the end – the beaches were waaaay too crowded). Again, day trips were advertised, this time offered by a third party, but the trouble was that only one person did them, and had a repertoir of probably 20 or so tours. He was booked until Thursday, and we’d only booked accomodation until Tuesday. Even if we’d wanted to wait, we couldn’t stay longer because everything was booked up in advance. Also, because the Black Sea coast is a very popular destination for Europeans looking to party it up on their 2 week vacations, the crowds were really not our type, indeed some of the other hostellers were almost rude. So even though we stayed in a fairly nice hostel, with a bar and community atmosphere, there wasn’t much socializing for us.
We’ve been a little lax on the blogging lately – apologies. We’ve just been enjoying our surroudings – a lot.
So we did the day trip to the Rila Monastery from Sofia. It was a long day. The monastery is certainly beautiful, but we weren’t able to go and see ‘behind the scenes’, so to speak. Not at all like the sort of living museum set up of the monasteries at Meteora in Greece. So we saw the beautiful church, and one of the museums that was all in Bulgarian, and contained mostly crosses, and a few robes, a few books, a little of this and that. Not quite what we were expecting. The setting was absolutely gorgeous, though. I can see why hiking is such a popular activity in Bulgaria – there’s hardly any scrap of land that isn’t scenic and breathtaking. Well, cities aside. It is possible to stay at this monastery, but we didn’t look into it. Dunno why, we just didn’t.
Early Church surrounded by Communist Buildings
We’ve been travelling around Bulgaria for a few days now. After Plovdiv, we headed for the smallish city of Samokov, which is very close to the Rila mountains. Our goal in heading there was to spend a bit of time outside and rest up a bit. We were very impressed with the city, which wasn’t very touristy at all, but still had english menus in the restaurants. Unfortunately there was limited hotel space and we could only stay 2 nights, before some outdoor group came that had everything booked up. So we spent our one full day there visiting the nearby ski resort of Borovetz, where we did some hiking. It was amazing the difference in price between Samokov and Borovetz, which are only about a 10 minute drive apart, as our lunch in Borovetz, which wasn’t very good, cost more than breakfast and dinner combined in Samokov. Samokov itself isn’t overly remarkable, except for the historical tidbit that it was the site of Bulgaria’s first commune, founded in 1909.
We’ve now arrived in Bulgaria, where we’re currently staying in the second large city, at a pleasant 300,000 people, Plovdiv. There’s a fantastic old city here, though not super old, as most of it was built up in the 19th century, during what’s referred to as the Bulgarian National Revival Period, which seems to come up quite often in the list of things to see here. There’s a distinct style of building from this period, where the second floor juts out past the first floor, and is supported by curved beams underneath, and then the outside is painted with what look like classical architecture features (columns and the like) except that they’re just painted on.
Well, so far we’ve been having a great time in Istanbul. People are much friendlier than in Greece, and the sights are incredible.
Since our last post, we spent 2 nice quiet nights in Delphi, the site of the famous Temple of Apollo. The ruins were much the same as many that we’ve already seen, but each site still has something unique about it. There were a couple of buildings that were interesting, and an interesting stone wall (I think there are pictures somewhere). The downside was that though there is a little train that supposedly runs between the site and the town, we’re not convinced it actually goes to the site – we saw it several times around town, but not once on the trek to or from the site; so we ended up walking a fair bit more than we expected to. As a side note, we have both lost enough weight that our pants are too baggy!
Well, we’ve spent the last couple of nights in Olympia. The town there was pleasant, and the archaeological site was one of the best that we’ve seen in a long time, though we have some complaints about the way it’s operated that I won’t get into here. There’s enough in way of ruins there to engage the imagination, and it’s large enough that the crowds are only a problem in a couple of pinch points, like the Olympic Stadium.
Well, we haven’t had much chance to blog since we’ve been in Greece. Unfortunately, affordable internet is a bit of a rarity, so usually by the time we’ve done our basic errands (check email, book hostels in next destination, etc.), we’ve already spend €12, and can’t take the time to write as well
Since the last entry, we’ve visited the islands of Mykonos and Naxos, and have now spent 2 days in Athens.
Neil & Kathy