Our first trip to Bulgaria

Our first trip to Bulgaria was in November 2016 where we hired a car and drove around for six days 2 days near Stara Zagora, 2 days in Targovishte and our last 2 days in a village near Lovech.
Since this we went back in June 2017 for two weeks where we drove from Sofia across country to Balchik for some beach time and back, having six days in Balchik.
We went back in September 2017 for 4 days and stayed in Lovech town.
Our next trip is July this year and another planned for October before finally moving permanent in December this year all going to plan.

We fly on those big orange planes from Manchester to Sofia which takes around 3 1/2 hours and the flights are about £70 to £80 return which is really good value.

Easy jet at Sofia airport.

On our first trip we picked up a hire car and set off towards the Stara Zagora area, leaving the airport we thought bloody hell where have we come to as there is a large Roma area with houses built out of all sorts of bits and bobs with corrugated iron roof's. The car doors stayed firmly locked. But as we drove out of Sofia in front of us were gorgeous mountains in the distance.

Stunning scenery ahead.

We arrived at our first hotel about 3 hours later just outside Chirpan we stayed at Hotel trendafiloff and at £12.50 a night each for bed and breakfast was another bargain. The hotel is just out of town but has a lovely restaurant and bar

Nice view from our room

Rush hour just outside Chirpan.

The following morning we met Minty and Pete who live in that area and write  http://movetobulgaria.blogspot.co.uk. over a coffee we picked their brains and gathered what we could in a short time. They are a lovely couple and we wish we had stayed longer talking to them but we were just mad keen to see some areas of bulgaria after what had been a full on day of travelling the day before.

We spent the next two days looking around the area and saw some lovely villages.

From here we moved on to the Targovishte area driving over the mountains. Bulgaria was growing on us it really is a beautiful country with friendly people.

Busy roads 

Shops for the fashion conscious

Friendly locals

We spent the next two days looking around this area which again is beautiful and where we are buying our house. Bulgaria is abundant in hills, forests , national parks and has the advantage of busy towns and cities on hand if you need them.

Fruit n veg market in Ruse, Rousse,Pyce all of which are different ways of spelling the same thing ?

The Blue ????? Danube which separates Bulgaria from Romania. Romania is on the other side of the river

Nice easy to read menus, 

After two days in this area we started to make our way back towards Sofia staying in a little village called Golets just outside Lovech for 2 nights.

We couldn't find our accommodation in golets  so asked a man with a horse for directions. Of course he spoke no English and all we could say in Bulgarian was " two beers please". So after a couple of minutes of charades and showing him our booking form with the address on he took us straight there, him and his horse. Just so friendly.

The lovely log fire in our accomodation

So pretty soon our six days were up and we had had a whistle stop tour and driven about 800 miles around Bulgaria.

One thing for certain we would be coming back the place fascinates and intrigues us. I'm sure there are some bad bits and some really shitty bits. But we love it. We saw some stunning sights, some beautiful sights and definitely some strange sights .

Until next time