Fruits!
Day 46: Comfort in Veliko Tărnovo!
Sunday August 11 - Day 46 - Rest Day - Total 1806miles
After a great night's sleep, we slept in until 8:30 when Andrea got restless and went out for cappuccino and grabbed stuff for breakfast - including fresh local pita bread (called parlenka) which was fluffy inside and crispy on the outside. As she walked around, the town started to wake up... so a little window shopping and stopping in at an antique store was practically mandatory.... The antique shop was about the size of a closet filled to the ceiling with shiny things, ceramic things, wool and leather, old army helmets and gems and jewels... The lady who worked there was about as big as the space left to look around in the shop, so when she walked in behind me I was trapped! She tried to sell me things from her table of shinny things... I wanted a year in there alone to sort through the hoard of collected goods but when I tried to touch anything she immediately stopped me since it probably would have led to the entire shop avalanching on my head and killing me with the swords I saw near the top of the pile... I left there empty handed but it was a good store!
Bruce wrote up a couple of blogs while Andrea was out. When she returned, Andrea convinced Bruce that it was cool enough to go out in the middle of the day - it was only 23C/73F out as it was cloudy! When we went out we actually felt a couple of raindrops! This was the coolest temperature we have felt in weeks!
Out and about in town, we bought postcards at one of the local touristy shops and went out for lunch and had parlenka stuffed with cheese like a calzone. This is a local treat we just can't get enough of today. We want to try all the types now, since we know we wont always get a really good local treat like this once we leave the city.
We have noticed a lot of stray cats everywhere....at every restaurant they are begging.. and it is really hard to not pet them or give them scraps. The stray dogs all seem to have tags in their ears...maybe they are spayed/neutered so they don't breed? Hopefully.
After an unsuccessful quest to find the tourist info office, we saw a fruit market! On the corner of one of the streets branching off of the old town we saw melons and peaches and raspberries and more... yum! We had to wander through. After great scrutiny, we got 2 peaches that were 1/2lb each and a large cup of raspberries for the walk back to the Hotel Comfort.
Back at the hotel, Bruce wrote postcards while Andrea wrote up another blog and posted stuff to weebly.
We have been talking about whether or not we really want to cycle tomorrow. Tomorrow would take us up the biggest hill on our trip since Oy in Bavaria. It isn't quite as high as that hill but it would be a long up (about 20km) and a long down (also about 20km)... all on fairly busy Bulgarian roads... Bruce doesn't really fancy the up and Andrea really doesn't fancy the down... It isn't that we couldn't do it, but do we really want to go through that experience again? We so have another option though, we could take a train over the hills (about 50miles down the way) and then pick up from there on the flatter lands around Galabovo. So we did some research online but we wanted to check out the train station ourselves just to see if this would even be possible. So we took a taxi down to the railway station to make sure we knew where it was, how to bring the bikes there, and where to load the bikes on to the train. (Can you tell we have done this before?) We intended buying tickets at the station if everything looked good, but the ticket office opened again at 5am so the lady said to come back then. We plan on leaving tomorrow on the 5:36am train to Stara Zagora. We know it is early, but then we will be able to cycle to Galabovo after that (about 38miles down the road) to get ourselves back on route. Glad we slept in today... so when we get up at 4am tomorrow is wont quite hurt so much...
The train station is at lowest level of the town so we took the local minibus back up the hill into town.
Really Important Observation about Bulgaria: The Head shake which we would normally think means "No" means "Yes" here. We asked driver if he went to the "center" and he shook his head, so we stepped back away from the minibus...he looked really confused...we repeated the question with the same shake of the head from him.....then the lady conductor came and said Center, Da, Da and shepherded us into the bus. We looked this up later and it turns out that Bulgaria is only one of 3 countries where this is the case along with India and Sri Lanka. This is going to lead to more confusion, I know it!
When we got back to town, we did some more route scouting by walking down onto the old bridge next to the Four Horses Monument to make sure we could take our bikes over it (we could since it was pedestrian only) to avoid the circuitous, but necessary route, the taxi took to the station.
Then we walked back to Hotel Comfort to meet up with Toon and Lien for dinner. They had found a great place earlier in the day and wanted to go back for dinner so we were up for that.
The restaurant served a homemade lemonade that was made with brown sugar and honey - very tasty. Good food, good company, and a good evening had by all!
Early night to bed since we have to be up at 4am tomorrow to get the train......
The World is Ours!
Sunday August 11 - Day 46 - Rest Day - Total 1806miles
After a great night's sleep, we slept in until 8:30 when Andrea got restless and went out for cappuccino and grabbed stuff for breakfast - including fresh local pita bread (called parlenka) which was fluffy inside and crispy on the outside. As she walked around, the town started to wake up... so a little window shopping and stopping in at an antique store was practically mandatory.... The antique shop was about the size of a closet filled to the ceiling with shiny things, ceramic things, wool and leather, old army helmets and gems and jewels... The lady who worked there was about as big as the space left to look around in the shop, so when she walked in behind me I was trapped! She tried to sell me things from her table of shinny things... I wanted a year in there alone to sort through the hoard of collected goods but when I tried to touch anything she immediately stopped me since it probably would have led to the entire shop avalanching on my head and killing me with the swords I saw near the top of the pile... I left there empty handed but it was a good store!
Bruce wrote up a couple of blogs while Andrea was out. When she returned, Andrea convinced Bruce that it was cool enough to go out in the middle of the day - it was only 23C/73F out as it was cloudy! When we went out we actually felt a couple of raindrops! This was the coolest temperature we have felt in weeks!
Out and about in town, we bought postcards at one of the local touristy shops and went out for lunch and had parlenka stuffed with cheese like a calzone. This is a local treat we just can't get enough of today. We want to try all the types now, since we know we wont always get a really good local treat like this once we leave the city.
We have noticed a lot of stray cats everywhere....at every restaurant they are begging.. and it is really hard to not pet them or give them scraps. The stray dogs all seem to have tags in their ears...maybe they are spayed/neutered so they don't breed? Hopefully.
After an unsuccessful quest to find the tourist info office, we saw a fruit market! On the corner of one of the streets branching off of the old town we saw melons and peaches and raspberries and more... yum! We had to wander through. After great scrutiny, we got 2 peaches that were 1/2lb each and a large cup of raspberries for the walk back to the Hotel Comfort.
Back at the hotel, Bruce wrote postcards while Andrea wrote up another blog and posted stuff to weebly.
We have been talking about whether or not we really want to cycle tomorrow. Tomorrow would take us up the biggest hill on our trip since Oy in Bavaria. It isn't quite as high as that hill but it would be a long up (about 20km) and a long down (also about 20km)... all on fairly busy Bulgarian roads... Bruce doesn't really fancy the up and Andrea really doesn't fancy the down... It isn't that we couldn't do it, but do we really want to go through that experience again? We so have another option though, we could take a train over the hills (about 50miles down the way) and then pick up from there on the flatter lands around Galabovo. So we did some research online but we wanted to check out the train station ourselves just to see if this would even be possible. So we took a taxi down to the railway station to make sure we knew where it was, how to bring the bikes there, and where to load the bikes on to the train. (Can you tell we have done this before?) We intended buying tickets at the station if everything looked good, but the ticket office opened again at 5am so the lady said to come back then. We plan on leaving tomorrow on the 5:36am train to Stara Zagora. We know it is early, but then we will be able to cycle to Galabovo after that (about 38miles down the road) to get ourselves back on route. Glad we slept in today... so when we get up at 4am tomorrow is wont quite hurt so much...
The train station is at lowest level of the town so we took the local minibus back up the hill into town.
Really Important Observation about Bulgaria: The Head shake which we would normally think means "No" means "Yes" here. We asked driver if he went to the "center" and he shook his head, so we stepped back away from the minibus...he looked really confused...we repeated the question with the same shake of the head from him.....then the lady conductor came and said Center, Da, Da and shepherded us into the bus. We looked this up later and it turns out that Bulgaria is only one of 3 countries where this is the case along with India and Sri Lanka. This is going to lead to more confusion, I know it!
When we got back to town, we did some more route scouting by walking down onto the old bridge next to the Four Horses Monument to make sure we could take our bikes over it (we could since it was pedestrian only) to avoid the circuitous, but necessary route, the taxi took to the station.
Then we walked back to Hotel Comfort to meet up with Toon and Lien for dinner. They had found a great place earlier in the day and wanted to go back for dinner so we were up for that.
The restaurant served a homemade lemonade that was made with brown sugar and honey - very tasty. Good food, good company, and a good evening had by all!
Early night to bed since we have to be up at 4am tomorrow to get the train......
The World is Ours!
Enjoying our rest day
Tourist shops! And I can't buy anything!
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