from 25th June to 2nd July we went to South-West Bulgara around the Pirin Moutains (staying at Bansko and Melnik). I'll post each days diary and pictures as soon as I can.
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Michael
Saturday, 25th June – Long trip to Sofia – Bansko...
We left the house in the early hours of the morning and made a 2 ½ hour trip to Heathrow – it had rained heavily the night before so at least the garden had a good soaking. Heathrow was dull and cold and when we arrived into Sofia, Bulgaria at about 2pm (Bulgaria has a 2 hour time difference) the weather there was overcast and cloudy too - not what we had been expecting! Our rented car turned out to look like it had already seen a hard life, and after a long journey of around 3 ½ hours we arrived in Bansko, south of Sofia and at the foot of the Pirin mountains. The roads on the way varied from good to very full of deep potholes (sometimes extremely large), making a long trip down in the car more like the feel of a long day on the dodgems on a very hard wooden seat. The road-signs were largely unreadable / untranslatable / and often different from our Bulgaria map – luckily we had a Sat-Nav which was a godsend. Usually we like maps but in Bulgaria there aren’t any published to the necessary detail.
Before the trip I had a hard time imagining what Bulgaria would look like, and driving through the countryside I understood why. The landscape varied from dilapidated cities (looking like they came from an early 60’s soviet-block film set), to very dry landscape similar to Southern Spain or France, to woodland forests similar to the French Pyrenees and finally to Swiss-like meadows at the towns around Bansko. I could see that many of the locals who make a living from the country had a very hard life. I mean - a very, very hard life. Driving through one of the forest region there were locals at every couple of hundred yards with a makeshift stall trying to sell bottled honey, hoping to catch the tourists on their way to the ski-resort. How many times can anyone buy a jar of honey?
We would stay initially for the first 3 nights at Bansko at Hotel Avalon: this turned out to be a good move as the owner James is British and had been extremely helpful regarding previous emails and booking questions etc. He turned out to be just as friendly ‘in person’ and had plenty of ideas about where we could go, the only drawback being that a few regulars that knew the territory well were not at the hotel during our stay. The only foreboding news was the very strong breeze on our arrival (on the local news the weather had been so bad that the ‘big event’ of a local rock / Jazz festival had been cancelled due to the late withdrawal of Jamiroquai and the high winds). Our room was pleasant and we slept well (though we would find out that night, that eating-out takes a long time as the pace of service in most restaurants / bars is extremely slow).
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