According to LP there's a large hotel called Leopold I in the citadel - 60 rooms, recently renovated, and expensive. I didn't notice the hotel but I did notice a restaurant, and a few shops. Didn't investigate the shops, not my thing, but I think there was art work as well as souvenirs. Plenty of space for more.

The hotel is bigger than what was there before -- not sure if it's an expansion or the competition. But the decor is definitely not my cup of tea!

<b>Sep 15-16 - On to Sofia, via Nis</b>

I had ridden the bus from Belgrade to Novi Sad, and the train on to Subotica, in reasonable comfort, but I made the mistake of taking a local train back from Subotica. Knowing it had a four digit number had given me concern, but the timing was much better than the later three digit train. My bad, although it had airplane-type seating, it had no AC, and without AC you're actually better off in the really old-fashioned compartment-style carriages, where you can get a cross-draft. 

So I was pleased to settle into a modern coach for the long haul from Novi Sad to Nis, where I had decided to break the trek to Sofia. But no sooner had we reached the main highway than we had a flat tire. We limped to the nearest service station, where it took only the announced twenty minutes to put on the spare, and where the passengers had access to toilets, coffee, snacks and shade, but we were clearly traveling below normal speed, and were switched to a much older coach in Belgrade.

My seat-mate was a woman about my own age, who made a point of telling me that she was really Hungarian, rather than Serbian. The country south of Belgrade was much hillier than the flat plain to the north, with plenty of woodland, and I was in reasonably good shape when we finally reached Nis. But the bus station had no services to speak of, I didn't have a map of the town, and eventually I took an expensive taxi to the Hotel DuoD. 

Situated in the heart of the cafe district, on a pedestrian-only cobbled street, above its eponymous restaurant, it was much quieter than I feared, but the under-floor AC was hopeless. It didn't cut the humidity, it didn't really cool the room in the afternoon, and it was very cold to walk on at night. I can't imagine it works much better as a heating system in the winter, either. Still, I had a comfortable, if old-fashioned, room, where I slept well.

After I checked in I went off to investigate the fortress, where I found another very helpful T.I. before succumbing to a starvation attack. The fancy Hamam restaurant inside the fortress walls provided a tasty but very tough goulash, although it had more oil than broth. Then I followed the T.I. lady's instructions and took a bus to the train station, where I bought a ticket for the mid-day train to Sofia (and Istanbul) as the buses either left in the middle of the night or arrived in Sofia after 10:00 pm. The train was supposed to get in around 6:00 pm....

I decided not to trek to the other side of town to see the remains of the gruesome Tower of Skulls, a relic of the Turkish victory at the battle of Cegar in 1809. I did admire a couple of statues, and once again appreciated the parks and trees that seem to be a feature of Serbian towns. Dinner, which I ate in my hotel's restaurant (there wasn't much to choose between the ones lining Kopitareva), featured good chicken and fries, but veggies that managed to be undercooked and burnt at the same time! I consoled myself with a reasonably cheap glass of Cointreau.

I needed consolation rather more the next afternoon, as the international train to Istanbul put me forcibly in mind of the train ride I had suffered through from Istanbul to Sofia back in 1974, when the Turkish-Greek war over Cyprus closed Istanbul airport, and the tourists were crowded into carriages added to the back of the Orient Express - fifteen hours sitting up with no restaurant car and abysmal toilets.   

I would not have been surprised to find that the two carriages headed for Sofia dated from 1974, although this time I only had to share a compartment with two people - a couple of Swedish backpackers. At the Serbian border the engine disappeared, leaving us sitting in the sun for what felt like hours. After we finally crossed into Bulgaria it was to embark on another long wait, for no apparent reason, as checking passports took very little time, and the ineffectual search for contraband not much longer. (I'll have more to say about that later.)

All that sitting around, steaming in the heat, meant that I arried in Sofia in darkness after all. The Swedes had been told they would be moved to a different train, with better carriages (they had paid for couchettes) in Sofia, and with the other Istanbul passengers disappeared in a rush. I trekked upstairs to the main hall where I found a functioning ATM and not much else besides a series of taxi touts. I had intended to take a tram to my hotel, but after one of the touts pointed out the route to the trams - down a dark underpass - and I recalled warnings about the station district after dark, I took the helpful tout's taxi instead.

It was the next morning, when I discovered I was too late for breakfast, before I realized that we had arrived even later than I had thought, as there was an hour's time change between Serbia and Bulgaria. I spent one night in the Hotel Niky, thinking the tour hotel too expensive, and my room was really only acceptable for one night. The hotel restaurant, on the other hand, with a stream running through the middle and plenty of happy-looking locals, was fine. I appreciated my first taste of Bulgarian wine, too.

<b>Status</b>

I'm now in Tirana, having traveled Ohrid - Sv. Naum - Korca (by car), Korca - Gjirokaster (by car), Gjirokaster - Saranda (by minibus) and Saranda - Tirana (by slow bus). I'm heading to Shkodra (by minibus) tomorrow, before going over the border to Montenegro and what sounds like a very nice place for a rest. I need one!

My journal is up-to-date, but obviously my writing is way behind! And I've been wasting my time on Fodors arguing that walking away from baggage claim with someone else's bag is not a "S... happens" accident, beyond the perpetrator's control, but a preventable mistake for which one should feel some responsibility. Given the people who have apparently done this, or feel it's entirely excusable, I'll be standing even closer to the start of the carousel after my next flight. Arriving to find my bag missing is one of my travel nightmares, even though all the valuables are in my (heavy!) carry-on.

<b>Sep 17-18 - Tour time in Sofia</b>

My hopes of being able to check in at the tour hotel, the rather upmarket Crystal Palace, were dashed, but they did record my passport details and hold my bag. Having missed breakfast, I set off down Sofia's yellow brick road (yes, it's real, although a bit on the pale side) looking for food more than sights. I did appreciate my first look at the main cathedral, and at the Russian Orthodox church, and was interested to see that a large and lively children's fair was sponsored by an Amercian friendship organization.

After good mushroom soup and a not good sandwich at the Bulgaria cafe I returned to the hotel to find the new person on the front desk had no record of me, and took a good quarter of an hour to decide I really was supposed to stay there. Then I had to get them to fix the AC.

At the start of tour meeting I found that we had 22 people on the tour - fewer than my last Rick Steves' tour, but more than I had hoped. All were well-traveled - one was a travel agent - and I got on really well with a couple of the other singles. However, I was surprised to find several extreme right-wingers in the mix - previous tours had been rather more left of center, and I found it annoying that a number of people clearly thought that "no photo" notices didn't apply to them. 

The tour leader, Lyuba, had prepared welcome packets for us, with background information on Bulgaria, each day's itinerary, and a page on the Cyrillic alphabet. That was well beyond what any previous leader had done, and she was to prove a very engaged and informative guide. I had already been coping with the Cyrillic alphabet in Serbia, but since I'd used it on previous trips to Russia and Ukraine I wasn't having too much difficulty. Once you realize that "pectopah" means "restaurant" you're off to a good start.

That first evening we retraced my route from earlier in the day, on the way to dinner, and the next morning we set off on a more extensive and very ecumenical walking tour, taking in the Bulgarian Orthodox cathedral, the Russian church, a mosque, and a synagogue, along with a number of official buildings and source of spring water popular with locals.

I really wanted to see the Boyana church, not included on the tour, and after a quick lunch in a nearby market, I set off with one of the other singles (from Scotland!). Unfortunately, we got "taken" by our taxi driver - I wanted to negotiate the rate, but my companion was happy with the meter, which turned out to be rigged.  However, the church, and the nearby Museum of History, were absolutely worth the trip. The frescoes in the church were painted in the mid 13th century, and their custodian was eager to point out that they predated Giotto, while showing the same realism. I found one of St. John of Rilla, whose monastery we would visit the next day, particularly arresting.

Visitors only get ten minutes in the church, and we were very lucky to be able to go right in - the day before the wait had been very long. We also had the museum pretty much to ourselves, and I had a nice time admiring the Thracian gold, as well as the building itself, an interesting holdover from the Soviet era.

So glad you're back, thursdays -- hope Montenegro will give you some respite and a chance to catch up! Looking forward to hearing more about Bulgaria! When I lived in Sofia (in the late 70's: the bad old Zhivkov days) only Nevski cathedral and the small Russian church were open -- but any kind of worship was actively discouraged.

Still reading. Do watch your luggage!

<b>Sep 19 - Roughing It In Rila</b>

As with the proverbial curate's egg, on a tour I expect some good and some bad. This tour had started well: my roommate was very quiet - I practically had to drag her out for coffee - but that was much better than the opposite; the tour guide was interesting and engaged; the initial walking tour had gone well, and the Q and A session with a local economist the second evening had been open and lively - although he had skipped my smuggling question. But I had doubts about day three.

We were going up to Rila monastery, an iconic complex I very much wanted to see, but we were spending the night in the monastery, rather than in the nearby hotel, and there were rumors there would be no hot water. I had not initially thought that too much of a problem, but now I learned that we wouldn't check into our next hotel until 6:30 in the evening...  Then there was the visit to the Roma Community in Dupnitsa.

I'm really not fond of these "visit the local village" events. I vividly remember my first, on a misbegotten OAT tour, where we were expected to hand out candy to the kids in a Lao village. I hate feeling like I'm in a human zoo. This one was certainly better than my experience with OAT: Lyuba seemed to have a good relationship with the local contact, and we had another Q and A session with her. The chicken soup and salads served for lunch were good, but I wasn't particulary impressed with the children's dance, and was saddened by the dated machines in the computer center. (USAID money stopped when Bulgaria joined the EU, and the Peace Corps volunteer who had been working with the community left.) This was a settled Roma community, we didn't meet any others.

My outlook wasn't improved by a lunch-time discovery that some of the group thought that only property-owners should be able to vote - did they want to go back to the 17th century, or was that the 18th? Several centuries of progress seemed to be in jeopardy. I felt better when we reached Rila monastery, however, it was just as beautiful as I had hoped. And there was actual hot water! (Well, warm.) But the beds were a disaster - I should have followed my first thought and put the mattress pad on the floor. Whatever passed for springs sagged so much I woke up every time I tried to turn over.

The next morning Lyuba took us on a very good tour of the museum, church and tower. We were on our own for lunch, and fortunately I had taken Lyuba's advice to make a sandwich at breakfast, as there didn't seem to be much else going.

<b>Sep 20-21: Plodding Round Plovdiv</b>

The five hour drive from Rila to Plovdiv, our next stop (two nights, this time), was broken by a welcome visit to a winery. Not that I was particularly interested in the tour - seen one lot of stainless casks and oak barrels, don't need to see any more - but I was enthusiastic about the tasting. The Bulgarian wine I had been drinking with dinner had certainly been palatable, and I was interested to try some more.

The stop was at the Bessa Valley Wine Cellar (http://www.bessavalley.com/ ), and the wine was supplemented by bread, cheese and sausages. While I found the rose, as usual, too light for my taste, I enjoyed a quite good red blend and a rather better reserve Cab/Syrah, which we got to taste from the barrel, a first for me.

I was less enthused by the tour hotel in Plovdiv (Dedeman Trimontium Princess). The interesting part of town, the old part, is up a hill at one end of town. We were staying in what looked like a Soviet-era behemoth (albeit renovated), at the other end. As with the Sofia hotel, this one was much bigger, and more main-stream, than those I usually choose, and those I expect on a Rick Steves tour. It really seems that he's left the back door days behind.

The next morning's walking tour was my first encounter with what became my biggest problem with this itinerary: a very long morning, pushing lunch unrealistically late, and leaving a short free afternoon. I would have much preferred a shorter tour in the morning, and then another tour in the afternoon. Not only could I not handle a late lunch after an early breakfast, I found my concentration failing after two or three hours. This day we had started at 9:00, and Lyuba was still taking the group round a house museum at 1:00 pm, at which point I abandoned the group in search of lunch. 

Since starvation was threatening, I didn't have long to find somewhere, and nowhere I saw in the old town seemed to be open. I did find a remarkably cheap falafel place down near the hotel, but then didn't feel inclined to trek back up the hill to visit any more museums. Fortunately we had visited the ethnographic museum as well as one house museum, but most of the morning seemed to have been devoted to walking around, and checking out the decidedly underwhelming Roman theater.

I spent rather more on ice cream and coffee that afternoon than I had on lunch, and took advantage of the hotel's wifi to update my blog and check my credit card bills. Not very exciting, but it was raining. Dinner, chicken stuffed with mushrooms at Philopopolus, with a few of the other tour members, was a definite improvement on the afternoon.

Am still enjoying each installment, thursdaysd. Travel in Bulgaria still has its challenges! But I trust that the lovely people there have not changed too much?

Hi skibumette - challenges were due to long distances and Lyuba's ideas about lunchtime! People and scenery were fine.

I am reading your trip report with interest as we are headed to Croatia in June 2012 and intend to go to Budapest via Dubrovnik,Mostar, Sarajevo,and Pec.

Katyt - see if the cruise ship schedule is still on the Dubrovnik Port Authority web site, and try to pick a day with only one or two ships in port.

All - I realize I forgot to mention that being at Rila after the other tour groups and assorted day trippers had gone was a real privilege. We got to wander round the buildings and admire the many frescoes without fighting crowds, to attend the services if we wanted to, and to appreciate the peace and quiet and soaring hills that make it a great site for a monastery. RS needs to make a donation to the monastery for better beds, though!

That last comment sent me scurrying to google maps to find out if Rila was a cruise ship destination!! Rereading, I see that there are two separate comments there. One of my biggest fears when visiting somewhere is being swamped with cruise ships. When I was in Dubrovnik there were 5 monster cruise ships there. The little town can't cope.

Yes,we are planning to miss as many cruise ships as possible,unfortunately I just read that Princess Cruises are stopping in Korcula starting in 2012.
I always enjoy your trip reports and looking forward to the next installment.

<b>Sep 22 - Tombs and Tourism</b>

As I have said before (ad nauseam, probably), I'm not a beach person, but although I'd already visited the Black Sea twice, I was moderately interested in seeing it again. At Yalta I had thought the water dirty but the town interesting, while at Batumi in Georgia the pebble beach and the temperature had reminded me of England and of summers shivering beside the Channel. However, the Black Sea resorts were Bulgaria's biggest mainstream tourist attraction. That might not be a good thing.

Also not good was the distance to the coast from anywhere else of interest. According to the schedule Lyuba had provided, we would leave Plovdiv at 8:00 and not check into our hotel in Nessebar until 18:00. True, that did include visits to one museum (in Kazanluk) and two tombs (Kazanluk and Kosmata). Given that I would eat breakfast at 7:15, I was relieved to see that lunch (sandwiches provided by the Plovdiv hotel) was scheduled for 12-ish. (I'm sorry to keep harping on meal times, but with borderline hypoglycemia a starvation attack is a serious matter, and I'd just had a near miss the day before.)

The Thracian gold in the museum was beautiful, but the tomb was much smaller than I expected - I had been thinking of the big beehive-shaped tomb I had visited at Mycenae. This was a similar shape, but the ceiling frescoes were the real interest. We had to wear white coats and remain silent, and got just two minutes in the tomb.

At this point Lyuba decided we should postpone lunch and go look at the other tomb first. Since I could feel starvation setting in I had to insist on getting my sandwich while the others visited the tomb. I hated to do it, but I would have hated a full-blown attack more. Lyuba insisted that I visited the tomb while the others ate (on the bus, it was too cold to picnic), and this one was bigger, but without frescoes. I'm afraid I found the gold more impressive...

Red wine and grapes were handed round after lunch, and we made a mid-afternoon stop at a Burger King - a rather nice Burger King, with good toilets. Still, it was a relief to arrive at Nessebar, where I was pleased to find that my room came with a neat balcony with a view of the water. The relief was short-lived, however. I should have read Lonely Planet with more care - this was tourist central with a vengeance. Once upon a time Nessebar was, I feel sure, a small, charming fishing village. Now it was wall-to-wall souvenir shops and cafes. Even without wall-to-wall tourists it was exactly the kind of place I hope to avoid. 

Dinner, with two other singles, confirmed my bad impression. We had tried to find a place recommended in Lonely Planet, but were having enough difficulty in the dark that instead we picked the one restaurant near the water that seemed to have customers. Usually that's a good sign, but this turned out to be the kind of place that doesn't expect repeat customers. My schnitzel was fine, but on one side of me was a nuked steak, and on the other a serving of skate that was mostly bone or cartilege or whatever it is that the fish uses to stiffen its wing-like fins. It's true that skate usually consists of a lot of inedible stuff, but portions are supposed to be big enough to make up for it.

The bad news? We were at Nessebar for two nights. The good news was that at least we weren't at Sunny Beach, a major resort complex we could see across the bay. Lyuba told us that it attracted young, partying Europeans in droves, but that the prices had been driven so slow the system might not be sustainable.

I like the sounds of the red wine and grapes, not sure about the rest of the trip!

<b>Sep 23-24 - Black Sea Overkill</b>

The morning of our full day in Nessebar our tour of the town took in the museum and several churches, giving us some idea of what the place might have been like before the souvenir shops and hotels took over. I was starting to work on plans for my next country, Macedonia, and was pleased when Lyuba ate lunch with me and gave me some contacts and suggestions. (Although I did take her claim that Albanian and Macedonian men, unlike Bulgarians, could be dangerous to solo women travellers with a grain (or two) of salt.)

After an afternoon stroll with my camera I joined one of the singles on her balcony where we shared wine (the local merlot easily beat the local chardonnay), and she filled me in on the gossip from the west coast. I had thought that Rick Steves' divorce might have been his ex-wife's idea - maybe she had tired of having a husband who spent every summer in Europe? But no, it was the same old story - middle-aged man falls for much younger woman.

Next we had a short drive, via the mega-resort area of Sunny Beach, to Varna, still on the Black Sea coast. If I had to do it over, I would skip the Black Sea altogether, saving a lot of driving, but three nights was certainly at least one too many. It occurs to me that I've been writing as much about the tour as about Bulgaria, underlining one of the probems I have with tours. I have a tendency to let details - the quality of the guide, the minutiae of the itinerary, the foibles of my fellow tourists - overshadow the country I've come to see. In the case of Bulgaria, a place with a long history and plenty of good scenery, that would be a real pity.

The early history of Bulgaria is that of the Thracians, and the only reason I had actually wanted to visit Varna was to see the Thracian gold in the city's museum: the oldest gold artifacts in the world (fifth century B.C.E.). (See http://www.amvarna.com/eindex.php?la...2&slid=&slid=1 ) While the Thracians seem to have been good warriors, like their neighbors the Greeks they were unable to hold off Philip of Macedon, or the Romans. After the Roman Empire fell, there was a mass influx of Slavs to the area, and a series of wars between the peoples who became Bulgarian and the Byzantine Empire. While the Bulgarians enjoyed periodic success aginst the Byzantines, they lost decisively to the Ottomans.

After I left the museum, where Lyuba was still explaining the details of a series of icons to a dwindling audience, I visited the nearby Orthodox cathedral. Bulgarian Orthodox, that is. The Eastern Orthodox church is much less monolithic than the Roman Catholic church, although it hardly matches the fragmentation of the Protestants, but all the divides seem to be along  national lines: Russian, Greek, Georgian, Armenian, Serbian, etc. etc. I don't know how that relates to the Ottoman habit of identifying people by their religion rather than their ethnicity, but it can't have helped in the recent Balkan wars.

The Bulgarian capital, however, is notable for having an Orthodox church (two if you count the Russian church), a (beautifully restored) synagogue and a mosque within easy walking distance of each other. And while the occupied Balkan peoples periodically attempted to get rid of the Ottomans, at least under them, as under earlier Islamic empires, there was a measure of religious toleration for the other "people of the book". You had to pay higher taxes, there were limits on the height of your church or synagogue, you even saw your eldest son taken to Istanbul to be a janissary, but at least you didn't have to worry about being hauled off to be tortured and burned to death because a neighbor had denounced you as a heretic or a witch, or that your part of town would be invaded by a murderous mob inflamed by libels about your religious practices. 

Most people, of course, go to the coast for the golden beaches, not the Thracian gold, and certainly not the churches. I have miles of sandy beaches a two hour drive from my house in North Carolina, which I visit maybe every third year for a couple of days. Once I found that there were no cafes overlooking the beaches I lost interest in them, and I found Varna pretty unexciting, too.

After Varna we had another long drive back across country. While I enjoyed the views, the best part of the longer drives was the descriptions Lyuba gave us of her life under Communism, and during the transition - "when democracy came", as she put it. She started out as a construction engineer, but was one of the first to lose her job when the system changed. We may like to think of democracy as a panacea, but for those who lived through the fall of Communism, in Russia, in Bulgaria, in other former Soviet republics, life suddenly became very difficult indeed, with starvation sometimes a distinct possibility. Even now, a couple of decades later, the transition is not complete. The economics expert who talked with us in Sofia was open about the problem of corruption, which extends to the judiciary. It takes more than elections to create a fully functioning democracy.

Enjoyed your comments -- especially noting that there is now a functioning synagogue and a mosque in Sofia...something we would never have seen in the 70's. (Even Orthodox churches, with the exception of Nevski cathedral and the little Russian church, were locked up tight.)

Your comments on democracy are spot on. The "old" Bulgaria was a case study in the power of controlling information: there was no internet, no access to Western AM/FM radio, only State-run TV, travel to the West (even Greece) was not permitted -- so people didn't know what else was out there and for the most part accepted the limitations of the system they had. When the Wall came down and the Soviet Bloc fragmented, Bulgarians got a taste of what they had been missing. But it can be very tough learning how to navigate in a totally new system.

<b>Slight digression on Sarajevo</b>

Depending on how you look at it, my timing was one day off, or spot on. Thursday I walked past the US embassy in Sarajevo - not because I wanted to visit it, but it was on my route, despite having been moved further out the center. Anyway, Friday I left on an early train for Pecs, in Hungary, where this morning I read that a man had tried to shoot up the embassy on Friday!

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...=Cheat%20Sheet

"Timing is everything" -- in this case, I'd say your timing was perfect!!