Bulgaria

On the journey from Istanbul to Croatia, we spent six nights in Bulgaria. Two in the capital city of Sofia, and four in Veliko Tarnovo, the former capital, perched among the mountains in the northwest.

Sofia still looks like a post-Communist city. Over-sized concrete buildings are easy to spot just outside the centre, and over-sized concrete monuments scattered through the city's vast parks proclaim everlasting friendship with Russia.


But, the centre of the city is a tangle of construction sites that will help modernize the city - overseen by the symbol of a revitalized capital, an enormous golden statue of ‘Sofia’ herself. The women who stride in stilettos over the uneven mess of a sidewalk are confident that they, and Sofia, are cultured and European.

We did a free walking tour to get to know the city - saw the historic Bulgarian Orthodox churches, the smattering of Roman ruins (more of which are surfacing as plans for a metro are carried out), the government buildings that date to the era between Ottoman rule and Communist. And then, best of all, we spent a few hours drinking beers in the park with our twenty-two year old tour guide, comparing the worlds in which we grew up.

It's basically a playground.

Our second day in Sofia we walked out to the Military Museum. The inside section is mostly uniforms from the war fought against the Ottomans for Bulgarian independence, poorly marked and dull. But outside, before you even pay to get in, you can roam a lawn cluttered with tanks and big guns and fighter planes, all rusting away quietly (some painted red so it's harder to tell) at this little out-of-the-way museum. Once you've paid your one Euro, the inside lawn contains everything from WW1 trucks to a missile launcher and advanced radar.

Awesome!

That evening we discovered one of Bulgaria's hidden charms: food. This is a very fertile country. The richness of its farmlands is evident in the plump, juicy tomatoes and the creamy deliciousness of the local yogurt and cheese. The markets are full to bursting with vibrantly coloured produce. That the land and the expertise of the farmers was wasted throughout the Communist era, and that the people in Sofia so often did without fresh food, is incomprehensible.

And, as Bulgarian produce is glorious and varied, so follow suit the restaurants. Their menus are books. There are pages of salads - they take their salads very seriously here, even though the diet is largely meat based. Pizza has been adopted and re-imagined (pickles is a very normal topping) and the traditional meat-and-potatoes style meals are amaaaaaazing.

I'm beginning to drool just writing about it all.

Leaving Sofia, we grabbed a three hour bus into the mountains to Veliko Tarnovo, a small student town perched on the edge of a gorge. We’d planned two nights and ended up staying for four, enjoying the people and the food and the stunning scenery.

One afternoon, after the heat had dissipated, we climbed up the closest ridge in the hopes of hiking to a nearby monastery, which, like many in the area in the mid-nineteenth century, was a haven for rebel soldiers fighting the Ottomans. But, as we reached the top of the ridge and started down the path, we heard gunshots. A shooting range was throwing clay pigeons down the path right in front of us... hike cancelled!

So instead, we sat on a bench at the top and looked over the gorge, cutting away dramatically beneath us, falling to the wide, rushing river that winds like a snake through the town, houses cascading down the three hills. Veliko Tarnovo is beautiful.

We spent a day shopping for warm-weather clothes and shoes (unsuccessfully) and then a day out with a hostel-organized day trip of the region. We saw another monastery (no shooting range this time!), a historically preserved town (think Fanshawe Pioneer or Upper Canada Village) full of traditional crafts, and we drove all over the rolling, forested mountains and the wide valleys, inhabited by tiny, insular villages and by small, impermanent gypsy camps.

Finally, we visited a Russian-built monument that served as a conference centre - a massive, concrete-domed bowl at the side of which was attached a thin, five-story tower, adorned with a huge red star.

These days, it’s called the UFO, because that’s what it looks like. It was abandoned after the Communist party fell and its lavish insides were plundered - marble flooring ripped up, the copper roof stripped, the spray-on red velvet ceilings torn out. It’s technically still locked, but armed with headlamps, we climbed through a window and explored its dark and dusty corners.

Upstairs, in the round conference room, all that remains of the former glory are the coloured-glass murals on the walls, depicting Party members and heroes, content workers and Socialist glory.

We went down to the basement, where mushrooms grow in the damp piles of rubble and someone has spray-painted creepy messages ('Zombies round here') - more thrill than history. No hidden creepers down there, I was watching.

The place has remained as it is, because it would seem that the government doesn't really know what to do with it. So it sits abandoned, red star broken but gleaming, sometimes visited by curious tourists but mostly by wild horses seeking shelter from the mountain winds.

I was entirely unprepared to leave the Veliko Tarnovo, for no good reason at all. I hadn't done enough laundry or researched our rapidly approaching weeks in Croatia, and I was still doddling along with my blog.

But really, I was reluctant to leave Veliko Tarnovo because it meant leaving Bulgaria, and this beautiful backwater with its fascinating past and its delicious food has stolen my heart.

We boarded a mid-morning bus to Sofia and wound our way up over the tall ridges, peering over secretive valleys that have hidden rebel soldiers and gypsies alike over the centuries. I'll miss this fertile land with its fantastic food and hidden-gem monuments and monasteries.

After a few hours in Sofia (just enough to trade our lev for dinar), we were on our way towards Serbia.

We'd decided to skip Belgrade and just cut straight across the south of Serbia from Sofia to Sarajevo, with a night's rest in the Serbian city of Nis. We were reluctant at first because there isn't much information on Serbia's bus system online, but with a conformation from our chosen hostel that a bus does run from Nis to Sarajevo (one at 6 am and one after 9 pm if you are googling this) we decided it would be easier than Belgrade.

Our only impressions of Serbia come from the uncomfortable buses, the funny and helpful owner of the Happy Hostel in Nis, and a massive dinner of rich, smokey meat and thick bread. So although I've heard many stories about the mistreatment of Americans (and Canadians) in Serbia - mostly in Belgrade - we experienced only kind hospitality.

The trip from Nis to Sarajevo was long - ten hours - but beautiful, all mountains and emerald rivers, endless gorgeous scenery.

S.

Sun and Ruins - Fethiye and Pamukkale

We're flat out on the wide stones of Turkey's Oludeniz beach, on the Western Mediterranean shore. The sun beats down, still hot in the late afternoon. Above us, paragliders swirl in the thermals, spinning up and then float down to land up the beach behind us. The fishy-salt smell of the ocean blows over us, the waves, white-foamed in the brilliant azure water, smash again and again against the cove.

Eventually we overheat and speed-limp across the scalding stones to plunge into the ocean, just cool enough to refresh us, but so salty that I surface with teary eyes every time I put my head under water.

When we get out, I consider: should I reapply the waterproof SPF 50 sunscreen on my face when it's already four o'clock?

Yes. Yes I should. Ginger kids burn fast. And I'm not alone with my pale skin - this corner of the coast is practically one big British resort town.

That evening, on our way back to our hotel in Fethiye, we stopped at one of the many tour boats in the harbour to arrange a Twelve Islands tour. Fortunately for us, Ramadan meant a lull in domestic tourism, so an eight hour boat trip with swimming stops and provided lunch was running at twenty-five lira - thirteen bucks. Yes please!

So we spent a whole day lounging aboard the Princes Serap with about fifty other people - not bad on a boat with two levels and 150 person capacity. Drinks are expensive on-board, and outside drinks are forbidden (we were able to sneak some water on), but even with the drink tab, the day was cheap.

We swam in five little coves, some with other tour boats, some alone, and the Captain lent us his diving mask for free so that we could explore underwater.

The next day, we grabbed a dolmus from Fethiye to the Saklikkent Gorge, where we spent the afternoon wading along the polished, white canyon floor.

Dolmuses are driver-owner minibuses but the fares and routes are predetermined by the regional authorities. So a driver will linger as long as he can before leaving to get as many fares as he can, and then troll slowly along the route, honking at prospective customers because more people means more money.

So it takes a while to get anywhere.

Dolmuses are decorated with everything the drivers can think of: evil eye pendants and stickers, Turkish flags (Turks are a very patriotic bunch), photos and business cards taped to the windows. In one, we saw a shag dashboard cover. It was magnificent.

We moved north a few days later to the little town of Pamukkale, which sits at the foot of two impressive attractions.

Visible from across the wide valley are travertines, a shiny, white hill that to our Canadian eyes looked strangely like snow. Rather, the hill is a series of calcium terraces deposited by thermal springs. The mineral-rich water runs down the hillside, forming pools and painting a thick crust as it flows.

There's no shoes allowed for the hike up the hill, just bare feet on the little ridges and in the slimy calcium mud that builds up in the pools.

At the top of the hill is the partially preserved ruin of Hieropolis, built as a health resort when the Romans found the mineral springs. The steep theatre has been partially reconstructed, the necropolis is in impressive shape, and you can pay to use the baths near the white cliffs. We visited at sunset, when there aren't many people, so we wandered the site without the crowds, examining columns and fountains and tombs until the night-time call to prayer rolled over the hills and it was too dark to see properly.

But just one ancient city is never enough, so the next day we packed into a hired car and drove two hours into the dry hills to see Aphrodisias.

The Temple of Aphrodite, to whom the city is dedicated, stands partially reconstructed, and a few of the other major buildings have been excavated and somewhat restored - a hilltop theatre, the massive house of an evidently important man and the baths are in decent shape. The city gate stands tall and glorious in the middle of a field. But just to the north, the stadium reigns king of the ruins.

It's set into a hillside so that you approach from the top of the seating - you pass a line of trees and the enormous oval stretches suddenly before you. It could hold thousands and thousands of people and is in remarkably great shape. The rows of stone seats are warped and crunched, but some are still usable. The ground-level, where I can imagine chariots racing before a roaring crowd, has been excavated and re-established.

Best of all, because Aphrodisias is so far from any major towns, there were only a few small tour groups and a few independent travelers around. We sat alone in the carved seats of the two-thousand-year-old stadium, contemplating chariots, awed by the enormity of it.

We ran into difficulty leaving Pamukkale. Whereas earlier in the week, Ramadan had proved to be a cost-saver, now it was ruining our plans to head up the coast. Ramadan had given way to Beyram, the festival celebrating the end of the fasting. Which is when everyone in Turkey goes on holiday, and the buses are booked.

So we ended up heading right back to Istanbul, because the night bus wasn't full. We spent two days doing nothing but wandering the crowded streets and eating kebab, and then loaded onto another night bus, destined now for the Bulgarian border and the Balkans.

S.

Cave Dwellings

Capadoccia is out of the way. It's in the centre of Turkey, hours from any other touristy destination - but it's incredibly popular as a window into an ancient lifestyle and a unique landscape.

We rolled into Göreme, the region's most popular town, on a Sunday morning, tired from a restless snooze on the night bus from Istanbul. We made our way through the little crowd of hotel owners offering lodging, and down a street full of restaurants and souvenir shops and ATV rental agencies to find our hotel.

Soft, white stone is the defining feature of the whole region. There are two major draws: the natural rock formations created by erosion, and the homes and churches that were carved out of the same stone by the Byzantine Greek population beginning in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

We were staying in a 'cave' hotel, which means that some of the rooms on offer have been carved out of soft volcanic rock to make a unique and atmospheric little room. It's a cute change of pace.

Göreme itself grew up around a collection of carved-out Byzantine churches that forms the Göreme Open Air Museum, which was our first stop while we waited to check into our cave room.

There are a number of individual churches and chapels as well as a monastery in the complex, all long-abandoned but well-preserved. They're each carved out of the cliff side and filled with artwork.

In some, the predominant art is primitive red ochre: lines and geometric shapes drawn in decorative patterns. But in others, there are full-colour frescoes of biblical stories and figures. The faces of the figures were largely smashed off in the following centuries, but in many of the churches, the colours are still clear and the designs are easy to interpret.

At the end of the string of churches is one nicknamed the 'Dark Church,' because no natural light enters the chamber, thus preserving the original, vivid colours of the frescoes, to incredible effect. From floor to ceiling and front to back, the church is covered in paintings, angular figures with black-outlined noses, wrapped in colourful robes set into a deep blue background. Here, too, many of the eyes have been gauged out, or the faces have been smashed off by rocks - some of the paintings are eerie in their facelessness, bright colour abruptly giving way to dull gray rock - but the room is beautiful and quiet.

That evening, we went for a short hike east from Göreme through the Rose Valley, a fertile little stretch of grape vines and dry shrubs and trees. On the way, we found many more abandoned cave houses, carved inside big conical formations and into ridges that swirl gently upwards like rosebuds.

At the collapse of the Ottoman empire, Turkey and Greece held a population exchange. The Capadoccia region was populated primarily by ethnic Greeks, some of whom were still living in the traditional carved-out homes, but few Turks came here to replace them. We wandered through a few of the homes - it's so hard to know if these were in use at the time of the population exchange, or of they'd already been abandoned for centuries. The empty, dusty shells defy all attempts to pinpoint a timeline. In places, we saw where the rock has given out and houses have collapsed, or half a room has tumbled two stories to the ground, exposing a perfect cross-section of this bizarre, ancient lifestyle.

We sat on a ridge above the Rose Valley and watched the sun sink over the horizon before making our way home along a ATV trail.

Th next day, we took an organized day trip - nice to get a full sampling of the region and let someone else do the planning, although being shuttled around in a convoy of mini-buses on identical tours is at most a once-in-a-while activity for me.

We admired the fairy chimney formations in Göreme from a viewpoint above the town, then drove an hour across Capadoccia to an underground city, carved out two thousand years ago and used for centuries in emergencies. When war struck the region, which was often given its position on the trade route to Asia, the entire population of each town would move into their respective underground labyrinths of tunnels for safety. They could stay for a year or more if necessary and subsequent generations tunneled deeper. This city was twelve floors deep: we squeezed down the long, short stairways to the eighth floor, deep in the cold earth.

We went on a short hike through a forested, shady canyon (so rare in this dry, dusty place!) and ate lunch at a riverside restaurant, then climbed through an ancient monastery carved into the side of a towering, rocky hill.

Our final day, we were booked into a night bus to the Mediterranean coast, so we decided to spend the day hiking to exhaust ourselves. We walked back through the Rose Valley, this time making our way past the grape vines to the adjacent Red Valley. By chance, Dan noticed an opening above us in the rock wall - through it, we could see St. John's cross carved into a ceiling. We found a dusty path hiding in the shrubs and scrambled up to find a church, certainly Byzantine and so certainly old, one room decorated with faded frescoes, all to ourselves.

We ate lunch in the cool inside of the church, examining the paintings and the carvings. Once, this place was covered in polished, gleaming white stone and in bright frescoes. Amazing.

We left the valley church and walked along the sweltering, shadeless highway to the Love Valley, famous for its tall, thin 'mushroom' formations... most of which look extremely phallic. (It is the Love Valley, after all.)

The rest of our hike took us through the aptly named White Valley and after a lot of backtracking, back to Göreme for a much-needed shower before loading onto the bus for the night.

S.

Istanbul

The voice cuts through the oppressive late-summer heat, warbling out of the megaphones, insistent. In the fading light, it reaches through the tight, winding streets of Galata with their slinking, suspicious street cats, and floats over the houses and join the other voices from the other minarets, calling out to the people of Istanbul.

This is the call to prayer, and it's sung five times a day from the mosques - startling when you're standing directly below a minaret, but it's a nice reminder to slow down in a bustling, modern city.

We got to Istanbul mid-way through the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. It's too big a city - and too big a tourist destination - to slow down much during the day, but the difference was evident every night when the local population spilled into the streets and the restaurants to socialize and break their fasts, and two-thirds of the stores were open until midnight.

But the tourist trade continued on uninhibited, so we were able to delve into Istanbul's goldmine of Byzantine and Ottoman-era landmarks with no problems at all.

In the overwhelming heat (we were sadly conditioned to Britain's cool weather) our first stop was the underground Basilica Cistern.

The Cistern - no bodies these days.

It was built in the sixth century as a massive city reservoir  70 metres by 140 metres and and 20 metres tall, walled with stone and thankfully cool. still propped up by its original carved-stone columns. It was forgotten somehow for a millennium, and rediscovered in the twentieth century. In the meantime it had been a receptacle for both garbage and pesky bodies.

Within a couple days, we'd payed a visit to the two biggest religious buildings in the city - first, the Blue Mosque and then the Aya Sofia cathedral.

The Blue Mosque, from the courtyard.

The Mosque was built in the sixteenth century. The domes rise gracefully, each reaching higher to the enormous central dome, surrounded by six slender minarets. Inside, hundreds of windows and stained glass flood the mosque with daylight, illuminating the blue wall tiles for which it was named. Underfoot is a thick, red carpet, on the walls hang gold-painted verses from the Koran. The whole structure is held up by four massive 'elephant foot' pillars.

The Aya Sofia is a thousand years older. Built in the sixth century by Byzantine Emperor Justinian, it was for centuries considered to be the greatest church in Christendom - not a small claim. After the fall of Constantinople, it was converted to a mosque, and after Turkey gained independence, it was turned into a museum.

Aya Sofia's interior, taken from the balcony

The interior of the church, essentially just one room, is the largest we'd seen in our travels - the dome arcs high over the spacious cathedral. In an impressive feat of Byzantine engineering, it is self-supported, so the sheer size has all the more impact in the absence of pillars.

The room is now a graying yellow, but in its prime, the expanse of the ceiling would have been covered in gold mosaic tiles, shimmering in the candlelight. Elaborate mosaics were created and altered right up until the building's conversion to Islam, when they were largely plastered over - biblical scenes and saints,as well as portraits of the rulers of Constantinople. Now, a selection have been recovered and partially restored.

We spent a hungover day on a Bosphorus tour - down by the piers, a horde of hopeful tour operators make their case for their boats - "Bossss-phorusbosphorusbosphrus two hours. Two hours. Good price. Sir? Hello, yes please!"

Down the straight are the upscale communities of Istanbul, Ottoman palaces and sleepy little fishing villages, all settled into the hilly sides and blue coves of the Bosphorus.

Our boat went all the way north to the mouth of the Black Sea, where we had lunch in a little tourist village before sailing back to Istanbul.

Our final day, we explored Topkapi Palace, the seat of Ottoman power for centuries. The palace buildings line the sides of four peaceful, lush courtyards, where the business of ruling an empire and family life existed in harmony.

At the end of the day, we said goodbye to the street cat family on the corner and hopped on our first night bus

S.