Drive to Veliko Tarnovo was mostly excellent, very easy clear roads and awesome scenery, at least until we reached the Romania-Bulgaria border, where Cumu, now navigated by google maps, tried to make us drive straight through the river and but I took command from her and guided us through a ridiculous maze of construction (because crossing borders should be even more frustrating, clearly) into an hour long wait to get to the passport and customs checkpoints as the single connecting bridge was also having construction done on it and was reduced to a single lane which both directions of traffic had to share. Finally made it over the bridge and after some minor hijinks due to Macky's non-EU passport got through and drove the rest of the way without complications up into the Bulgarian mountains and Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria's ex-capital city. Veliko is a really cool city, built around the curved side of a mountain and with a very nice old feel about it, as Lewis put it "Bulgarian Winchester".
Checked in at "Hostel Mostel", which was another pretty standard little hostel but also with a nice outdoor deck area with swinging chairs and crazy peacock-tailed dove things (the scientific term for them) and also with dinner and a beer included each night in its remarkably cheap rate. After arming ourselves with a beer, as we had to do it in proper Australian fashion, we brought Cumu around the front to help the staff jumpstart their tour car then hung out with Ben, our newfound American mate who had been living in Georgia teaching English which sounds like a pretty cool life for a while. After our free dinner, which was insufficient to our needs, we went for a wander with a Welsh guy to a Bulgarian restaurant with amazing views out over the city from its patio and experimented with traditional Bulgarian "Hotch Poche" which was a clay bowl of meat, potato, cheese, egg and vegies, super hot and all in a tomato sauce and a great success. Spent the rest of the evening with Ben, Welsh Guy and Katie, an unrelated Welsh girl, on the patio aside from a memorable half hour outing just after 9 to see the light show on the fortress on the top of the mountain, which is put on 3-4 nights a week on random nights and is 15 extraordinary minutes of different patterns and colours of light playing over the walls, buildings and trees which cover the entire mountaintop.
Up at the painfully early time of 8:30 for breakfast then, joined by Ben, Katie and her friend Leanne, and a quiet japanese guy, embarked on the 9 hour long "UFO tour" offered by the hostel. The tour was meant to go in a single car but due to too many numbers we took ourselves and Ben in Cumu, which with its working aircon and Gorillaz soundtrack was a far superior option.
First stop of the tour was a nice, old monastery in a tranquil little river valley followed by an exploration of the caves in the mountain above it, where, much to our amusement given the tales of cave bears we scared the girls with during our Budapest caving adventure, they had exhumed the skeleton of a giant cave bear. The caves where not particularly big compared to our previous caving but were very cool and had a nice Bulgarian tradition of putting a coin against cave walls and, if it sticks, getting good luck. We then moved on to Etra Open Air Museum, a very cool village set up of buildings who used a channelled river to run old-style Bulgarian machinery for traditional village crafts, woodcarving, leatherworking, rope making, silver crafting, making traditional Bulgarian foods etc. Was very cool to see how it all used to be done. Lunch was also had there, tasty tasty Trout, the first seafood of the trip (!!!).
After lunch we drove up to the top of the mountains to the tour naming "UFO", a memorial built to a great battle in 1891 but built during the communist era so abandoned due after the regime fell in Bulgaria and gone to ruins, the copper roof stolen and the wooden supports collapsing into it. Unfortunately the day we went there was also the first day in 25 years that tourists weren't allowed to enter because they were starting restorations but it was still very cool to see and had amazing views out over the mountain range and farmlands beyond, plus a fun winding drive up and back down. Because it was closed our guide then took us to another monument, a big stone tower surrounded by old cannons and a funny copper saucer we climbing into to escape the wind (and also just because we could), and then finally to a second monastery which had a very cool little bright blue church on one side filled with beautiful biblical artwork. It must be so much easier to be religious in Europe where religious buildings are so awe inspiring.
Got back to the hostel just in time for the free dinner and beer then, tired from our long day, chilled out with some more beers with the others.
Left the next day at about 11 for the drive to Turkey.
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