To Borovets, Monday 21 July

First, a note about those mineral springs where people were filling big plastic bottles. Considered to be therapeutic as well constant flow, still wonder why so many so big bottles. Should have filled ours!

Anyway here we are in Borovets for the rest of the week. A ski town which ticks along in summer, enlivened by JWOC participants for now. Lifts still run though so may be able to get up to Yastrabets 2369m if weather good. Many hotels tucked in amongst trees, few shops of nondescript nature, cafés and restaurants. One or two stalls selling jams, honey (important product of Bulgaria as is also of Slovenia), and dried therapeutic herbs. Healthy lot, these Bulgarians, what with that and yogurt which originated in the Balkans and here is very nice. Everything is so cheap, it's amazing to us and other foreigners, but there's a sting there for locals because if prescence of tourists push prices up, things get to be out of reach of locals. Eg. Taxi to bus station for us both, 25 mins, cost us about NZD 8. Bus up to Samokov, over an hour, about NZD 3. Taxis are so cheap often a better bet than the rather complicated tram and bus and underground system. Has to be a yellow one as others are unmetered and unlicensed and liable to diddle you.

Here's the taxi after dropping us off, and then the bus...

As usual , they were digging the place up when we got to the bus station in Samokov..

Until the boss arrived in his flash ! truck and took them off for lunch

Here is the Borovets Gardens Aparthotel where we are now ensconced, very nice two-roomed plus bathroom for just the two us us, fridge and cooking facility, very swish and still not expensive.

And the piece de resistance, a Bealey style pull-out bed for me. How did David's design travel so far?!

First pull out "drawer"

Lift and pull out side of mattress with loop

And drop into place 

The NZ team are in another grand hotel nearby, along with several other teams. We met up with some of them and all seems well, having a good time and looking forward to first race tomorrow Tuesday.

And out of order but here is the last bus trip into Bulgaria from Croatia via Serbia

Belgrade railway station

Sunflowers by the trillion

Let off the bus for a few minutes...coffee and WC

Interesting gorge after all the flat country, between Nis and border crossing into Bulgaria at lower right edge of map, quite a minor road linking major highways. Construction of new motorway underway ...

Into Bulgaria

Sunday Afternoon in Sofia 20 July

Temped to add some photos now back at hotel, which by the way is very comfortable and we have a room with own bathroom instead of shared and various other luxuries as well as breakfast included all for less than hostels everywhere else. We overlook the massive road works mentioned before:

Underneath which is a very smart underground railway station:

And next door to us is this dwelling....

People were filling big plastic water bottles at a set of public fountains, can only conclude some apartments don't have water..read later that it is "mineral water"

And now a noteworthy building or two,the cathedral then the mosque 

And roman remains...

Arrived Sofia Sunday 20 July

Bus trip took 12 hours, but was 1h 20 late starting ie. after midnight, oh joy!

Sun rose  while we waited going through border control Croatia into Serbia. Amazing number of trucks and families travelling at night.

We are doing this blogging at cafe during nice meal, wifi additional! But any photos taken during day are on camera not iPad, don't have connector here so only one photo today. Sipping coffee, watching soccer, beside roman ruins. Actually there are current huge diggings all over the city, bit like Chch but we aren't sure what for. Robyn's turn to write after the one photo!

Diggings include a new underground railway system, whose rolling stock looks better than auckland's Chinese carriages. Population of Sofia about 3 million. Bus trip was nzd50 per person for 12hr trip and lots of buses departed in the evening, for Munich, Copenhagen, Dubrovnik, Rome,etc.,all full.  En route we were mostly in rural area growing corn,sunflowers, with a few cows but occasional groups of goats being babysat by woman doing here knitting. Did see some storks no doubt gorging on the corn.  

Had a funny situation on arrival at Sofia, to make up time the driver took a short cut (or followed his gps) along a 4 wheel drive track for about 5 Km, full of big pot holes and deep dirty brown water, nearly broke his axle but may have saved about 20kms thru lights, etc. around back of beyond broken down deserted premises. Weird!

Now at a 3 star. Hotel in convenient location, includes breakfast, and includes a real Finnish sauna - nzd55 for 2 people.  Looking forward to seeing NZ team tomorrow. 

Seen a bit of city, some big important buildings and lots of really delapitated areas and big grey high rise flats etc.

Leaving Zagreb Saturday 19 July

We are about to leave Zagreb Youth Hostel for a hopefully 11pm bus. Spent the day exploring old parts of Zagreb on foot ... Changing of the guard in St Marks Square where also are parliament buildings...

View across to Captol where is the cathedral with 2 towers, over the centuries much repair and earthquake damage etc....

... then we did a hop on hop off bus ride round the further away suburbs, mainly to be shown the amazing sporting facilities near the Sava river and lots of space for picnics and any sort of sport you might think of...

and lastly a hour or so inthe Zagreb museum which set out very well the whole story from Iron Age to about now.

 Well some might say that's just a door and so it is but some might reflect on there being doors and doors!

On way back passed a serious chess competition either just finishing or about to start..

 

Zagreb Saturday 19 July

Got to the Zagreb Youth Hostel about 4.30 Friday, having waited for bus in Ljubljana (coming from Munich) which was an hour behind schedule, and after a bit of excitement at the border where we crossed into Croatia but some Asians were not allowed across for some reason, so the bus did a U turn and dropped them off back in Slovenia and then returned through border controls and we were on our way again. The border flags are here to show the totally calm conditions but you have to imagine the temperature, well into the mid30s. Hard for those in NZ to contemplate just now.

What did we see of Zagreb in the rest of that day...

Well there must be giants around although we only saw their chair ..

And nice bright shiny blue, but old fashioned looking, trams by the hundred...

And folk music and dancing as part of a week-long festival (not, as we thought maybe, laid on especially for us)

And usefully engraved on the pavement, our location!

We have the day here now before another long distance bus. Who knows what time that will arrive!

Thursday 17 - a great day in Bled

We were away from Ljubljana a bit before 7am and got a train to Lesce Bled where we had a great breakfast and then hopped on a bus for the remaining 4km to Bled itself. Mountains all around a lake overlooked by a Medieval castle, a later church (St Martin) and in the middle a small island with another church on it. The lake is a glacial feature, and the island described as the only island in Slovenia. Back in June the World Rowing Cup was held on the lake. There are heaps of tourist boats being rowed about, of a unique style as they are rowed by one man standing at the stern. These are called pletna, and look quite nice but we thought it would be more fun to row ourselves as there were plenty of very nice wooden rowing boats for hire too. A very good thing is there are NO power boats on the lake.

 

So we rowed off (actually this one is a bigger boat, we had a shorter boat with one thwart as only the two of us, one to row...

And one to look decorative in the stern!

 Here is a pletna setting off for the island

 And one of many photos of the island taken from our 10km walk around the shores of the lake...

 and a difficult shot from a crag near the castle high above the lake. We left about 3.15 as the afternoon thundery rain was starting after a hot clear perfect day.