Bulgaria

I must say that my Black Sea holiday has done me good. It's been so nice, waking up in the morning and not feeling at all tired! Usually I wake up feeling a bit tired even on my days off.

This evening I went out for dinner at Malkia Inter, a restaurant/ bar round the corner, with 'R' and a mutual friend, 'S', who had Bulgarian lessons with us for a week or two before she stopped. I wasn't desperately hungry so I just had some tarator and a grilled chicken and vegetable skewer. While we were eating, 'S' invited me and 'R' to go to Tryavna with her and a friend of a friend of hers after lunch tomorrow; 'R' can't come because she's teaching in the afternoon, but I can because I'm only teaching in the morning.

I went to Tryavna with 'F' back in January, when it was sunny but cold, with snow lying around. I remember promising myself that I'd return later in the year, so I'm glad the opportunity has come up again!

I'll write properly tomorrow - for now, just a quick entry with some photos of the public art I have seen around Veliko Tarnovo. My favourites are the jellyfish electrical box and the steps whales!

Our bus to Sofia didn't leave until 15.00, so this morning and early afternoon was spent packing, editing photos, walking along Gurko Street in the sunshine to the ETAP bus station to buy our bus tickets in advance, eating ice cream from a stall in the main street and having lunch and browsing the shops on the craftsmen's street.

We had lunch on the balcony at Stratilat Café (an old favourite of mine), so we could look at the view while we were eating.

On our way back from the station we passed a gathering by one of the monuments off the main street. There were lots of bikes around, along with a giant inflatable Nescafé mug and someone talking over a loudspeaker. I found out the next day that there was a mountain biking festival going on; cyclists were biking through the hills next to VT, down the hill of Varusha (the old town), emerging at this monument junction and then continuing through the town. We didn't get to see any of the actual cycling though.

Dave's flight was at 21.55, so on arrival at the central bus station in Sofia we took a taxi straight to the airport from there. I say 'straight' but we actually had a bit of time to kill, so we had some dinner at the main café first. Pizza and Bulgarian rice pudding went down a treat.

Once I'd seen Dave off, I took a taxi to 'Ploshtad Makedonia', where Hostel Mostel is. I was in the same dorm where I'd been last week.

Tomorrow morning I will have just enough time for breakfast before I get the 9 o'clock bus back to Veliko Tarnovo.

It's Dad's birthday today, so I've had him in mind all day. I'm so glad that Dave was with me for most of the day.

As soon as we'd had breakfast at the hotel in Burgas, we took a taxi to the west bus station.

We arrived at 10.30 and noticed that the next bus directly to Veliko Tarnovo wasn't until 13.30, so we decided just to get the next bus to Varna instead. I knew that about 20 buses a day go from Varna to VT, so hopefully we could just hop on one of them soon after and then arrive back in VT early.

That wasn't to be, unfortunately - our bus arrived in Varna OK, between 13.00 and 14.00, but the next ETAP bus wasn't until 17.30! We were too knackered to go into the city centre to kill time, so we just looked round the Grand Mall Varna instead, which is right next to the bus station. We looked round, had some food and played a lot of 10-card rummy. It was very similar to shopping malls everywhere, though suspended from the ceiling were some beautiful decorations made from multicoloured paper.

We didn't get back to Veliko Tarnovo until 9 pm last night, so before we went to bed and conked out we didn't do anything apart from have a hot drink with 'F' and 'R'.

On our return to Burgas we made a beeline for the wonderful-looking ice cream shop I mentioned in a previous blog entry, but unfortunately it was closed. It was only about 3pm, but it had started raining, so maybe that was why it wasn't open.

The archaeological museum was also closed, due to painting work, so we set off to the ethnographical museum instead. This was set inside a small historic house; on the ground floor the living room was decorated and furnished like it would have been when it was built in the 19th century.

There were also some examples of very intricately worked and engraved metal jewellery - my favourite was the large pendant with a face in it - coloured cloth from a village near Burgas and a facsimile of an old photo of female traditional folk-singers from the local region.

Upstairs there was traditional female and male dress from various local villages; this included working clothes from Bulgarian immigrants to Asia Minor, wedding clothes and special clothes for Easter, St Lazar's Day (the day before Palm Sunday, this has various traditions attached to it), Midsummer's Day and other specific days. I liked the costume for male Christmas carol singers as well.

We left when the museum closed at five o'clock. We relaxed at the hostel until it was time for dinner, which we had at a Bulgarian chain restaurant called 'Happy Bar & Grill'. This chain hasn't appeared in Veliko Tarnovo yet. It had a very modern interior, with one large TV screen showing a match from the Madrid Masters tennis tournament and two smaller ones showing 'TV's Funniest Videos'.

They had several menus, including the main menu, a sushi menu and a strawberry menu! From the latter we ordered a strawberry & banana smoothie to share. Dave was ecstatic when he saw edamame beans with salt in the main menu, so we had some of that to share as an appetiser, along with a piece of salmon sashimi each from the sushi menu. For our mains, we shared a stuffed grilled courgette and green salad, and had something separate each as well. I had steak and potato wedges and Dave had salmon and trout with grilled vegetables. We had just enough room for dessert, so I had some créme brulée and Dave had a blueberry waffle. A veritable feast, and the whole lot for the equivalent of £25!

When we stepped outside we saw that it had stopped raining, so we walked to the seafront again. There's a park by the seafront and we were very taken with the giant model of a tropical fish which stood by the entrance. On our bus journeys out of town today and yesterday we had noticed more of these fish - I think they were connected to a National Geographic convention going on somewhere in Burgas around this time.