For our last day we thought we’d better take a look around Sofia. We had a street map with carparks on it the problem was it was all in Cyrillic. If I had been given the map at the start of the holiday there is no way I could have navigated us though the busy traffic to find a carpark…
Day 11 Dragizhevo to Iskar Dam
We left Dragizhevo with a bit of a heavy heart as the realisation that our holiday was coming to a close finally hit home and we needed to start heading back to Sofia. But on the way we wanted to have a look at the area around Lovech so made a slight detour north before driving back west to the…
Day 10 Exploring the area around Veliko Tarnovo
Today was spent exploring the area around Veliko Tarnovo and making notes on the various villages we passed though before heading back to the campsite. We still had no idea where we wanted to finally live but we had decided by this point that it would be north of the Stara Planina (Central Balkan mountains) , mainly due to it being…
Day 9 Plovdiv to Dragizhevo
After a comfortable nights sleep we decided to shower before setting off on our travels. We were a bit surprised to be given a key to one of the cabins near by, to use the shower there. There was a list of prices in the cabin and I was really taken a back on how cheap the rooms were so…
Day 8 Elhovo to Plovdiv
Our visit to Chris and Val marked the end of our scheduled meeting and property viewings. Our last week in Bulgaria was completely our own. We decided that we would like to revisit some areas we’d been through, but first we wanted to visit the city of Plovdiv before heading back north to Veliko Tarnovo. We had hoped to visit…
Aside
Signposting in Bulgaria is like nothing we’ve ever seen before, but the Bulgarian way is apparently common in Europe. Instead of a signpost pointing to the nearest town, and having other destinations along the way marked, signposts usually point to either Ruse, Sofia, Varna, Burgas or Istanbul. You’re expected to know which direction you want to go in.
Also, while signposts on the main roads were in Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, off the main roads they were all in Cyrillic. This made finding our way around very complicated, and led to some nifty map work from Julie, and a lot of pulling over to the side of the road while we decifered roadsigns
Day 7 Resting near Elhovo
Today we had planned a rest-day, a chance to chill out and relax a bit after our hectic and tiring drive of the last week. We planned to meet up with Chris and Val, who live near Elhovo and had kindly asked us to stay for the night with them at their house. We met them in Elhovo, and after…
Day 6 Rakovo to Malko Sharkovo
We had a free day before our next meeting in Elhovo, so decided to take a detour and so we did a loop via Nova Zargora. There was no reasoning behind our route other than there were some place names we’d heard of, and we wanted to have a look along the southern Balkan Mountain range. After the lush beauty…