Walking Out of Town
Taken by Neil and Kathy Carey on July 25, 2006.
We went on a short walk out into the countryside around Koprivshtitsa. It was very beautiful, and we watched a few fields being harvested for hay.

We've been a little lax on the blogging lately - apologies. We've just been enjoying our surroudings - a lot.

So we did the day trip to the Rila Monastery from Sofia. It was a long day. The monastery is certainly beautiful, but we weren't able to go and see 'behind the scenes', so to speak. Not at all like the sort of living museum set up of the monasteries at Meteora in Greece. So we saw the beautiful church, and one of the museums that was all in Bulgarian, and contained mostly crosses, and a few robes, a few books, a little of this and that. Not quite what we were expecting. The setting was absolutely gorgeous, though. I can see why hiking is such a popular activity in Bulgaria - there's hardly any scrap of land that isn't scenic and breathtaking. Well, cities aside. It is possible to stay at this monastery, but we didn't look into it. Dunno why, we just didn't.

Early Church surrounded by Communist Buildings
Taken by Neil and Kathy Carey on July 21, 2006.
This church dates back something like 17 centuries, originally having been a Roman hall of some sort. There are roman ruins throughout the ground here, and the communists erected massive government buildings completely surrounding this area.

We've been travelling around Bulgaria for a few days now. After Plovdiv, we headed for the smallish city of Samokov, which is very close to the Rila mountains. Our goal in heading there was to spend a bit of time outside and rest up a bit. We were very impressed with the city, which wasn't very touristy at all, but still had english menus in the restaurants. Unfortunately there was limited hotel space and we could only stay 2 nights, before some outdoor group came that had everything booked up. So we spent our one full day there visiting the nearby ski resort of Borovetz, where we did some hiking. It was amazing the difference in price between Samokov and Borovetz, which are only about a 10 minute drive apart, as our lunch in Borovetz, which wasn't very good, cost more than breakfast and dinner combined in Samokov. Samokov itself isn't overly remarkable, except for the historical tidbit that it was the site of Bulgaria's first commune, founded in 1909.

Overview of Plovdiv
Taken by Neil and Kathy Carey on July 17, 2006.

We've now arrived in Bulgaria, where we're currently staying in the second large city, at a pleasant 300,000 people, Plovdiv. There's a fantastic old city here, though not super old, as most of it was built up in the 19th century, during what's referred to as the Bulgarian National Revival Period, which seems to come up quite often in the list of things to see here. There's a distinct style of building from this period, where the second floor juts out past the first floor, and is supported by curved beams underneath, and then the outside is painted with what look like classical architecture features (columns and the like) except that they're just painted on.