Our fourth day started with a great home made breakfast in Triibrie hotel – mekitsi (Bulgarian fried pastry dish) with cheese, jam and great Rodopi tea (Mursalski). Can you wish for something better?
After that it was time for what we couldn’t visit the day before – the Devil’s throat cave. Legends say that here Orpheus dropped to the kingdom of the death to save his beloved Eurydice. Outside it looks like nothing special, until you go in – there are I think about 15 waterfalls, the biggest of which is 42 meters. The roar of them is scary. You have to climb to get out of the cave, to the natural entrance of it, where the water goes inside. Many people have been trying to throw objects in it, even live animals in ancient times – none of which have been found. Near the entrance there’s a memorial plate to the two divers, which entered the cave to search for its exit in the 70s – again, they did not exit.
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Monday morning in Melnik. It’s so good to not have to go to work. Instead me and Mü are walking around Melnik a little bit more while we wait for the breakfast room to open. This made us witnesses of a car, which somehow managed to cross an extremely narrow bridge. Funny people from Melnik.
After a nice breakfast we were ready to go to the Rojen monastery. Once again. A great place. This one is much better than the Rilski monastery to go to. If you are not a regular tourist and need something a little bit different for your trip – go there. The views to the mountains are stunning
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Let’s see what happened on the second day of our trip around Bulgaria
Sunday, early morning in Dragalevtsi, Sofia. Only one crazy person is walking around, looking at the houses, going to a 24/7 store to buy a newspaper and Pepsi. Yeah, that’s me – I like to wake up in the mornings 
A little bit after that the group is ready and we all go to Boyana church (Боянска църква) – one of the Bulgarian UNESCO World Heritage objects. The orthodox church is famous for the paintings (frescos or whatever they are called) from 13th century – absolutely preserved. A bad fact is that you can only enter for 10 minutes and no more than 8 people at a time – after all it’s relatively small church. The park around the church, however is absolutely great. Many trees, paths, some preserved gravestones. Next to the church is the grave of Queen Eleonora – the wife of the Bulgarian king Ferdinand I.
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Ok, this time I’ll try to add a little bit more for each object we visited (me, Muh, her mother and father). These will be seven articles – one for each day of the trip around Bulgaria.
On Saturday we started very early – I knew there’s a lot of driving this day.
Krushuna waterfalls (Крушунски водопади in Bulgarian) were the first one of our sights. They form an eco-trail from many waterfalls, each bigger and bigger than the previous. Each waterfall lays on a karst terrace, thus has an interesting color of the water.
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Well, let’s see – 6 day autotrip with about 2000 km. around Bulgaria
The route was something like that
- Day 1 – Ruse, Sofia, Rila monastery, Sandanski (where we slept because Melnik was fully reserved for the night)
- Day 2 – Sandanski, Petrich (Rupite), Samuilova fortress, Melnik, Rozhen monastery, Pazardzhik (where we slept in an awful hotel, named with the great name Elbrus)
- Day 3 – Pazardzhik, via a small curvy road with some dams, Trigrad gorge and the two caves nearby (Yagodinska cave, Dyavolsko gyrlo cave), Shiroka lyka (where we almost got to see the traditional Bulgarian kukeri festival – something like westerners Helloween
), Bachkovo monastery
- Day 4 – Bachkovo monastery, Asenova fortress (which was closed due to the snowstorm that started previous night), Plovdiv (the old city and the Amphitheater), Panagyurishte (where we initially intended to sleep, but didn’t find appealing), Strelcha (where we stumbled on a Thracian tomb and took a look at), Koprivshtitsa
- Day 5 – Koprivshtitsa, Klisura, Sopot, Karlovo, Kalofer, Koprivshtitsa – all revival Bulgarian cities. And we decided to stay in Koprivshtitsa because the hotel we were staying was so great, and the city itself is lovely.
- Day 6 (Final) – Koprivshtitsa, Kazanlyk (where we saw the Unesco thracian tomb), The ‘Hainboaz’ mountain pass (due to Shipka pass being closed from sliding trucks and snow), Veliko Tyrnovo, Ruse
In other words – 6 great days with all kinds of weather, but mostly funny. I’ll allow myself to post a link to the Picasa Web Galleries again…. ~HERE~
Edit: I’m uploading a map of the trip:
March 25th, 2011 in
Diary,
Tourism | tags:
Balkans,
Bulgaria,
Bulgarian mountains,
festival,
Pirin,
Rodopi,
Tourism,
travel,
travelling,
trip,
Yagodinska |
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In two days me, Muh and two of her friends will start an autotrip around Bulgaria. Tomorrow we’ll pick them from Otopeni airport in Bucharest, rest a bit and head to an early start.
Basically we will repeat the 2009 Rodopi trip and 2009 again South Bulgaria-Greece trip partly – visiting Rila monastery, Melnik pyramids, Rozhen monastery, Plovdiv the old city, Asenova fortress, Bachkovo monastery, Trigrad gorge, Dyavolsko gyrlo cave, Yagodinska cave.
Of course with some slight addition – after all the will be a whole six day trip around Bulgaria – not 3 or 4 day as before. We are planning to see Koprivshtitza, Tyrnovo, Shipka, Gabrovo, Tryavna again.
I just hope the weather will be OK – the spring is not exactly visible in this part of the world 
It’s still minus something, extremely cold, and some great north wind is expected, according to the forecast
Well – whatever it is…. I’m sure we’ll have fun. The old Audi is ready, my fellow travelers are ready, the map is drawn, the trip outlines are put. What’s left – well, a couple hours more.
Приятен път (or Nice travel) to wish it in Bulgarian
Since I’ve seen some searches for ‘Bulgaria tourism’, ‘Rodopi tourism’, ‘Rila lakes’, Bulgarian mountains, ‘Mountains in Bulgaria – I decided to offer something like:
Friends – please use the contact page. Write your questions, I’d try to help everyone. So far I’ve helped tourists from Belgium, USA, Romania, Ukraine, Turkey with ideas, contacts, etc. I know that information in English or any other language except Bulgarian is a bit hard to find sometimes. And I’ll do whatever I can to make your vacation, travel, hike around Bulgaria better settled.
So – if you need information on Bulgaria, Bulgarian mountains, travelling in Bulgaria, hiking around, or just information on the country itself: feel free to use the Contact page, or drop me a few lines at alex (_AT_) technobeast.net (the spaces, underscores, AT and brackets should be substituted with the @ sign, I hope you know that) 
Good luck
Alex
I don’t think I’ve shared this ‘interest’ of mine until now.
I read about Couchsurfing on the blog of Ivan Ilarionov – itilien. He was travelling around in South America on a very tight budget and that’s why Couchsurfing was something good for him. So I thought – let’s see. And on December 1st, 2009 I became a member.
Haven’t had many experiences so far, but may I say they have been some of the best. I’ve hosted travellers at my place a couple of times – let’s say 5-6. Had many requests since then, though some of the surfers have cancelled their requests, or I had to decline due to unavailability. The stories I’ve heard, the people I have met so far, their travels, adventures around the globe, their positivity, openness…. I don’t know how to describe that – it fascinates me.
Some day I hope I’ll have the opportunity to travel like that – take a couple of months and get to know the people of a country, not just the regular, crowded tourist objects. Because this is what makes a country – it’s people.
A viral infection should be like untreated common cold. Somewhere in between cold and flu. Except you have no temperature, but you feel like shit, and every single tissue of your body hurts.
What happens if you get a base of curds and avocado, décor with olives and put poached eggs on top – a healthy dinner 
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