Plovdiv

What a treat to arrive at our hotel and be able to step out into the streets of the prettiest town so far . The name Hotel Romantic set the scene as we arrived,a pretty pink National Revival building set off the main street in a traffic free location . Inside it was not quite up to the exterior but a lovely helpful crew made it a  nice place to stay . They did offer a larger room but we were only there for a night so squeezed in.
We did visit Plovdiv on our way to Orehova so we did get a taste of its treasures then as our guide took us along a two hour walk through the main points of interest so we were able to retrace our steps and linger at places of interest such as the Roman Amphitheatre which we explored and the Forum on top of the old town . We traversed the cobbled streets twice that night in order to see a rehearsal there for an Opera . It was magic sitting above the Forum looking down on the performance,listening to beautiful music and singing under the stars even if we did not know the opera.
We dined well at a traditional restaurant on shopska salad,chicken and lemon cello to finish . Later that night we treated ourselves to an ice cream at the Dreams Cafe and watched a bit of the soccer,reminiscent of Cologne four years ago before retracing our steps back to the hotel.

Walking the Rodopi Mts over and our next adventure begins.....

Up at 5.30 ready for a 6.00 am pick up . Vasco was to be our driver for our trip to the railhead at Dobriniske some two hours twenty minutes away from Trigard . This was new for our driver and he was not sure of the way so had been on Google and got it all sorted but it was a good trip through another part of the Rhodopi mountains towards the Rila monastery and Melik, apparently lovely places to travel to but not enough time to see everything we need to move along.
Sadly we arrived to find out the narrow gauge rail trip was not to be, the station manager told us the  train had had a crash and we would have to go on the bus instead at 10.20 am. A real disappointment but these things happen . There did not seem to be any information of this anywhere but people were working on a bridge further along so maybe that was the reason.
We sat in the sun,a couple of cinderallas waiting for our coach outside the railway station,another rustic vehicle turned up,hardly a coach
but it got us there with many stops along the way . This travel experience  was interesting in itself as bus drivers have stops,dismount have a smoke , talk to their friends as they require . The bus conductor laboriously hand wrote our tickets on the bus,
you cannot book ahead so it is a time warp.
The scenery was interesting and we passed Bulgaria's highest mountain,Mt Virhen in the Perin Ranges, also the site of skiing facilities for tourists because it featured a ski tow.
We  passed through Bolovo,known as the toilet capital of the world for the production of toilet paper . Great place to be caught short.
We also passed through Bransko,Velilgrad,spa towns along the route and arrived in Sempteveri as planned for out train trip to Plovdiv.
An old dunger of a train pulled up and on we climbed for an hours trip to Plovdiv . More about this lovely place later.