Expotition to Veliko Tarnovo

After a chilled out morning in Sofia, celebrating Rob´s birthday, we decided to don our rucksacks and head out on an expotition (as Pooh would have it) to Veliko. The hotel staff looked rather bewildered at our ´turtle chic´, as this look has come to be known, but nevertheless organised us a taxi to the Bus Station for the next leg of the trip.

We decided to break the trip to Bucharest in Veliko, a fortress town en route which was once the medieval capital of Bulgaria. The first thing we discovered is that no one pronouces it as one might think. The second is that in some cases all you can do is hope you got on the right bus and jump off it again at approximately the time the guidebook suggests. This was the method we employed, based on the fact that we had no idea what was going on. After 3 hours of travelling through beautiful Bulgarian countryside (and less beautiful suburbs), everyone got off the bus so we did too and thankfully realised we´d made it to Veliko. Again, like Plovdiv, Veliko does not immediately appeal, particularly when a strange man comes up to you and says that he has a hostel and transport if you need it... Thankfully, the woman from Hostel Mostel came to pick us up and we have spent the last couple of nights in a lovely hostel right near the fortress.

Hostel Mostel works on the basis that you pay 20 leva per person (about 10 pounds) and get dinner and a beer thrown in to the price of your bed. Lovely warm showers, laundry etc have all made this a great stopping off point. This is not to mention the actual town itself. Like Plovdiv, the Old Town is beautiful, all cobbled streets and ladies with goats. We spent this morning in the sunshine climbing around the fortress which has a patriarch´s complex at the top. The inside of the complex has the most amazing modern murals which use the same content as other Orthodox churches, but the images are slightly cubist in style and painted in grey rather than the bright colours we´ve been used to which was very cool. We both thought execution rock (where criminals were thrown down the gorge) was a little bit anti climactic as there are more impressive places in this area to fling people who upset you to their deaths.

We spent the afternoon wandering through the back streets to the ticket office to buy the tickets to Bucharest (7 hours tomorrow morning) and sitting in the garden reading and playing draughts before tucking into homemade pizza. We are becoming more and more concerned about how we will find Bucharest tomorrow as none of the guidebooks have been enormously positive. But as luck would have it, two people we met in Plovdiv, Jason and Kylie turned up tonight, so we´ve had a lovely time catching up.