This to me looked like a war-torn area.
We expected Bulgaria to be worse than Romania, and we found Romania a little uncomfortable at times. Were we in for a surprise. As soon as we crossed the border last week even the truck drivers seemed to slow down, the fields were ploughed and relatively clean road sides... the first hotels we found were reasonably priced for a change, the food was really nice... and the towns we came upon were great!
Yes, although this is Cindy alongside a Bulgarian highway, Bulgaria is still cleaner than what we have been getting used to....
Interestingly the Black Sea coast shuts down after the peak tourist season. We are pretty much in the last week of it, and many hotels, bars and restaurant just shut down for the rest of the year it seems. Especially the Romanian part. The crowds are down, which is good, but all camping sites are shut it seems, most hotels and restaurants are closed as well. Even the fancy hotel we booked via the Internet for Constanta (our first Black Sea destination where we had KFC), a Savoy Hotel, was pretty much shut down. No one in the bar to serve you, the restaurant was pretty much out of food and the bar out of beer (despite being a 4 star hotel only one kind of local beer was available in one size bottle and at a ridiculous price).
The hotel was meant to be a bit of a treat to mark the Black Sea arrival and it was our hardest day on the bike. Turns out the hotel was nothing like in the picture, was not freshly renovated (in fact in need of renovation!), and was not in Constanta at all (despite the map on the Internet showed it to be in Constanta). We had to ride an additional 10 kms that day to get to it!
Anyway, that was Romania. We then rode into Bulgaria a few days later. As we are no longer on the official Euro Velo 6 bike route for which we had the bike books we have to basically follow the main road. Maps are hard to find and inaccurate. The Nokia N95 we have with mapping on it is pretty much useless - it takes 20 minutes to know where it is to begin with - and the Garmin GPS's we have only have basic maps for these remote regions. We are driving on very busy dangerous roads. Dead cats and dogs strewn bloated and disfigured on the side, others try to attack you (we have seen waiters in restaurants with air-pistols in holsters shooting at unperturbed cats, maybe we should arm ourselves on the bikes). Trucks and buses fly past, and traffic is pretty horrible. Especially when we come to the bigger towns (cities really) it is a bit of a death defying ride in and out. David does an excellent job navigating through and around where possible and we do it, but don't ask how!
In between the towns and cities we now have small mountain ranges to traverse. We were hoping for nice quiet roads along the Black Sea, but we do not often get to even see it as we ride. The road goes up and down now and my legs sometimes run out of 'mojo' as David calls it. I then need to stop and re-fuel with Heather's concoctions of nuts and dried fruit. We are pleased not to have scheduled long distances here, and the day's ride is often only 3-5 hours long.
Just recently my little pinky gets tingly after the ride. Very odd. Must be some pinched nerve issue. In the beginning my nether region would suffer from the occasional numbness whilst riding, but that went away. Then a month ago I had a week where occasionally my feet and hands were a little numb during the ride. Now I have none of that during the ride but my little pink goes numb after riding! Oh, and in case you wondered, the butt-aches are completely gone. After a month of riding most of our discomforts in those areas had sorted themselves out - none of us suffered too severely from them fortunately.
Around about lunch time the support vehicle SMSes us the GPS coordinates of the hotel they found for us (we always hope to find a camping but have pretty much given up on that despite the numerous signs), and we plug in the details into the Garmin and ride in. On arrival it is often past lunch time, and we are starved and exhausted - well, speaking for myself actually (David does not really get tired... ever). We all dole around doing our things, wanting to do everything at once.
Walter looking for some spare Kleenex tissues...
Last night we arrived in Nesebar around 2pm, and we all wanted to do a million things. The hotel was fantastic (each next Bulgarian Hotel just gets better and cheaper the further we get into Bulgaria), we want to eat in the restaurant, drink a beer, swim in the pool, shower, go into the World Heritage Ancient City of Nessebar, walk on the beach, we want to do it together... But you try organising 6 people all with slightly different priorities, and none lucid enough to discuss 'the plan'. Makes Lucas's life hard, trying to film us! We all end up doing something and often end up together - mostly. Occasionally the one room key ends up in one pocket with another room-mate spending hours looking for it. Sometimes five of us end up somewhere and a sixth feels left out. But we are all happy to have some down time too!
Troy and I got to Nesebar at the same time as Lucas but we never found him there... We stupidly left 10 minutes after him, instead of at the same time. Lucas did try, but Troy nor I had any real idea of what we really wanted to do for the next few minutes - and sitting by the pool with a beer seemed the thing to do.
We mostly all do what we want to do in the 'time-out- period. I for instance have taken a liking to massages here in Bulgaria due to the favourable price factor. A young man gave me one after dinner in the hotel (as arranged by the reception) and that was probably my fourth in 3 days or so! I think this was my last one as well as I have had enough now. The firm therapeutic massage administered over a 90 minute period by an older woman really sorted out some knots in my back (knots I did not know I had which are now still sore!), the wine and chocolate wraps administered by some dandy lady were titillating and relaxing, but the dude tonight was pretty good all round I must say - after I got used to a man touching me like that (I am not normally a massage kind of person).
Troy at the old gate into the Ancient World Heritage listed City of Nesebar..
Lucas sampling the Rose we took on a boat ride. I think we are corrupting this young man... or should this be written in the passed tense?
Tonight I am in a bed in a hotel room, my laptop on the bed in yet another fantastic seriously well priced hotel in a lovely Bulgarian Black Sea town (Cosopol*?) where I found a random Wireless Network on my laptop that said call this phone number 80123456. I dialed it and had wireless Internet arranged with some IT enthusiast in the vicinity in a matter of minutes. Today I clocked over 4000 kilometers and tomorrow is our last Black Sea ride before heading inland towards the Turkey border. We will miss Bulgaria.
On October 1 we have Cindy's birthday (how many birthdays can 6 people have on one trip???) and I will start back on antibiotics in preparation for Istanbul, prolonged inactivity and pollution, driving 3000km back to Amsterdam, flying home...).
Walter-----
* The town spellings in English vary a lot. They are all in Cyrillic script here, which is what the Bulgarians use, just like they do in Serbia. This makes it nigh impossible for me to use the Nokia N95 for navigation as it will not work with co-ordinates.
Deserted beaches in Bulgaria - end of season!
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