Bulgaria - part one

I tour the beautiful country by car booked at the airport. 2100 km from the capital, to the fine mountains, the spa towns, the historic cities and the beautiful Black Sea coast before stopping again at Koprivishtitsa, a small jewel 100 km from the capital. BULGARIA a sweet and very cheap country Arriving at Sofia airport there was a likeable thirty-year-old Bulgarian, JACK who lived in London and who handed me the car, a BLUE Renault Clio for 320 euros for 17 days, including the kasko insurance with the Agency Sikongroup.com.Tonight after easily finding my nice hippy little hotel I went to discover Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. For the moment I rate it 8. Very green, relaxing, full of tree-lined boulevards in the style of Corso Sempione in Milan.

I saw the old town at night splendidly illuminated with the classical facades of various important buildings and the beautiful Alexander Nevski cathedral which is the city's masterpiece.There are very beautiful and sexy girls around.There are many casinos and gaming houses, even very small ones.I kept the car parked in a car park because the centre is off limits from 8.30 to 18.30.The centre is small and easy to see on foot although at this hour I am rather tired because anyway I have walked a lot. I am in PLOVDIV, the second Bulgarian city and it is incredibly hot.It seems to be the hottest day of the summer here right in a city that is usually an oven.It is the ancient FILIPPOPOLI, founded by PHILIP II of MACEDON, a city older than ROME. But only a few decades ago the great Roman theatre, the stadium and the Roman forum came to light which are among the main attractions of the city.

There are three historic hills and the largest encloses the citadel with the Roman theatre, ancient churches, various museums, historic palaces and original houses with strange architecture that for some time have been being restored, providing a unique spectacle.There is a large city park where people go to cool off and several pedestrian streets where citizens go shopping, drink drinks in the open-air bars and stroll.In the previous days I went to enjoy myself in the mountains for three days in 4 different localities.First the famous monastery of RILA in the middle of the mountains of the same name.It is absolutely the most beautiful monastery I have seen despite the many visited in ROMANIA.The setting is splendid, in the middle of greenery and mountains and then it is a white fortified citadel with three-storey buildings decorated with rich balconies with gardens.

In the middle the actual church with rich interior and exterior frescoes. Then I moved to the national park of the PIRIN mountains which are around 3,000 metres, in the city of BANSKO which is practically the local Cortina, at the foot of the Pirin mountains, with the old town made up of low houses in white stone and exposed wooden beams. Full of shops, boutiques and mexane, that is the local taverns where you eat grilled meats and rich Bulgarian salads, listening to folk music. Higher up is the modern part with big 5-storey hotels, Tyrolean style and very many buildings under construction for the joy of investors since you can buy flats at 350 euros per square metre.I drove the car for 15 km up the hairpin bends that lead to the VIHREN refuge at 2,000 metres and then on foot I climbed to the summit of the mountain of the same name which reaches just under 3,000 metres.

The difficulty was not the height difference of the 1,000 metres but the fact that I covered the route in sandals, since I had not managed to get hold of the hiking boots. I was convinced I wouldn't make it and would massacre my feet, instead everything went well.In the afternoon to relax I went to the thermal pool of DOBRINISHTE a village 6 km from BANSKO.I spent a beautiful afternoon, making a lot of friends, first with a couple of local thirty-year-old men sitting next to my sunshade and then with two wild girls in thongs. The next day I stopped at VELINGRAD, the spa capital of BULGARIA. A nice little town with many hills, pine woods and hotels of every kind with thermal pools.

This time I took a huge private room in a house in the centre, a stone's throw from the river and from the big public thermal pool where I spent the whole day, sunbathing (in the shade) and swimming in the Olympic-size pool of mineral water and passing every now and then into the very hot one at 30 degrees alongside.This morning I set off early at 7 from Plovdiv and headed for Veliko Tarnovo where I arrived at 10 after three hours of excellent road, largely a practically deserted and monotonous motorway. After Nova Zagora instead the road and the landscape become much more interesting with green hills, an important river that widens considerably and forms huge lakes along whose green shores there are a lot of fishermen and even people camped in tents.

I am in a nice hostel in Veliko Tarnovo which from what I glimpsed really seems to keep the promise of being the most beautiful Bulgarian city amid hills and ancient walls.Oh yes! VELIKO TARNOVO is really the most beautiful Bulgarian city.There are hills everywhere, two roads that are travelled in a ring, one with old houses in the lower part and the other the street of shops in the upper part with many little shops, boutiques, little restaurants.

The no.1 attraction is the Taravets fortress with very long walls, about 3km, the church at the summit and various towers, paths and ruins of ancient buildings.Between 1200 and 1400 it was the capital and main historical, cultural and religious centre then it became the capital also in the 1800s when the country expelled the Turks after the centuries-long occupation and before Sofia became the new capital.In the evening there is an impressive sound and light show with coloured lights, laser beams along the whole very long front of the hill.

Then two beautiful churches.I walked the 5 km on foot that lead to the monastery village of Arbanassi, with fortress houses and rich gardens, many transformed into hotels and restaurants.Here live quite a few Bulgarian rich people in their beautiful villas, thanks to the cool climate and the spectacular nature of the landscape and the panorama, since the little town is located on a plateau that dominates the nearby Veliko Tarnovo.Now I have been 4 days on the Black Sea coast, a sea truly beautiful in terms of water, beaches, colours, climate but unfortunately they have built a great deal like in Rimini, indeed in certain points it looks like Las Vegas!I stop in the more human and normal places, skipping the other terribly touristy places.Fortunately some pleasant localities remain like the one where I am today in the south: it is called Primorsko and it is a pleasant little town with only

a few big hotels and for the rest small little hotels and a lot of peace besides the beautiful very long beach and green hills all around.I also visited Varna, one of the most beautiful cities and a great Bulgarian port. It has a great many beaches, parks and pedestrian streets. Varna also has a beautiful cathedral and above all the most prestigious archaeological museum of the country which I did not miss.

There you find vestiges of the civilisation of the Thracians, of the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines who succeeded each other in the country before the arrival of the Bulgarians coming from the shores of the Caspian Sea and who arrived in the country around the sixth century AD.Then two jewels: Nessebar practically a little Venice, the ancient Apollonia inside a peninsula which is reached via a short isthmus.In its confined space for a length of 1 km and a width of 300 metres you meet typical little houses with a stone base and a wooden first floor. There are characteristic little squares and many ruins of ancient churches and then shops and restaurants everywhere.

Similar to Nessebar is the not far Sozopol: indeed made up of three peninsulas lined up like Chalkidiki in Greece; the first is the ancient part and very particular, quite similar to Nessebar, while the others are of more recent settlement and less c