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Farewell Bulgaria

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We successfully finished our 2265km road trip around Bulgaria yesterday. What a blast! Now we get to organize ourselves for a few days in Sofia and prepare for our next destination.

I left off our last post with us relaxing in Burgas on the Black Sea coast. After a few days there we headed north to the city of Varna. What we learned was that both Burgas and Varna are happening places on the Black Sea coast, during the summer. For us they were quite sleepy places with most coastal businesses closed up for the winter. In the end that worked out very well for us. The weather was excellent for late November and we had ample opportunities to walk along the beaches and explore the cities.

While driving up to Varna we checked out the ancient city of Nessebar. Originally established in the 6th century BC it has a fascinating history. However when you check it out in November you will be limited to walking the streets because nearly every business in the old town is closed.
The ruins are still neat to walk through.
Our nine days in Varna were meant to be relaxing, and they were. Beautiful walks along the waterfront and parks.
We checked out the Orthodox Cathedral in Varna which was quite impressive. We also had the chance to meet up with some fellow travellers and enjoyed dinner with them down by the port.
I had mentioned earlier that there were rumours of a large number of fortresses in the northern half of Bulgaria. Well that turned out to be true. We did a day trip out to Provadia to check out the Ovech Fortress.
Simply incredible how they built these fortified towns on top of mountains and organized all the logistics associated to running a town.
The view of Provadia is pretty good from the top.

Once we packed our bags and departed Varna heading westbound it was all about the fortresses. Thank you again Karen for putting up with my geek side.

The first stop enroute to our overnight accommodation in Pleven was the city of Tarnovo. Tarnovo was the capital city during the Second Bulgarian Empire and has a fortress to do that justice. The ruins are huge and impressive. Sadly this is as close as we got.
Some things don’t show up on Google maps. The detour to get to the castle was simply too long and would have left us with 30 minutes before closing. Oh well. Still impressive to see from a distance.
The next day we headed to the City of Vidin with a detour to check out the fortress at Belogradchik. This place is epic! I couldn’t help but think it was the inspiration for the mountain fortresses in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The Romans built the first fortress here and they knew what they were doing. It’s location and natural fortifications are awesome.
Karen chose to wait patiently while I climbed to the top to check out the views. Awe inspiring is all I can say.
While in Vidin I managed to subject Karen to one last fortress. Baba Vida is the only entirely preserved castle in Bulgaria and was a great way to end the castle odyssey. We even managed to play a very small role in helping to rescue a stray dog off the top of the castle. It was lovely to see the locals take action without hesitation to help the dog.
That is the smile of someone who is finished with castles for a while.

As we left Vidin and headed back to Sofia to return the rental car we encountered the worst weather since being in the country. Fortunately it was less than a 4 hour drive and our little car handed the rain like a trooper.

We have checked into a perfect apartment for our few nights here in Sofia. They even had a bottle of chilled wine waiting for us in the fridge.

The neighbourhood we are in is beautiful. This old mosque which has been converted to an Orthodox Church is just metres from our front door.

Bulgaria has been a wonderful experience. Great history, fantastic food, and landscape that is constantly surprising. It has been great.

I wonder what Istanbul has to offer?

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