Day 88 to Day 91 - Sofia, Bulgaria to Singapore to Melbourne

An early start to get the shuttle to Sofia Airport where we boarded our Ryanair flight to Athens.

Once in Athens we changed to our Scoot flight to Singapore. We finally landing in Singapore at around 4:30am the following day (local time).

We had a few hours sleep, then caught the MRT into town, where we did a bit of shopping, M got a haircut at a place where you took a number and paid via a machine, and we finally ended up having dinner at Boat Quay,

The flight to Melbourne the next day left at the very reasonable time of 11am, so it was a pretty cruisy flight!

THE END

Day 87 - Plovdiv to Sofia

This was the last real day of the holiday as the next day we were starting the journey home. 

The distance from Plovdiv to Sofia wasn't far so so we looked for a side trip on the way and found the ski town of Borovets. It was a lot cooler there but also fairly quiet, we walked around town a little and then found a restaurant for lunch. We can see that the place would be very busy in winter as it's geared towards snow and skiing, presumably a lot cheaper than skiing back home. 

We drove back to Sofia on a modern four lane freeway, at one point we saw a horse and cart passing on a bridge overhead, Bulgaria is still hanging onto some of its old traditions.

We arrived at the Best Western not far from Sofia airport, the rental car company came to pick up the car and also reimbursed us for the broken windshield wiper. The hotel was really nice accommodation at Bulgarian prices (about AUD$100 for the night), so a nice place to finish our Eastern European trip.

Day 86 - Sunny Beach to Plovdiv

As we checked out the girl on reception commented that our stay was too short, it was actually too long, never go to Sunny Beach!

We had brunch at Sozopol which was very similar to Nessebar the day before, both places would have been better choices for the night. It was very hot walking in the 30 degree heat and we were glad to find a shady table on the waters edge, everyone at home had spent the morning telling us how cold and rainy it was back in Melbourne so weren't very sympathetic to our problems with the heat!

We had planned to visit our last castle for the trip, castle Ravadinovo, however on the way there we read that it wasn't an ancient castle but a recently built theme park type of building, we had a quick look from the outside and kept driving to our destination Plovdiv.

Plovdiv is 6000 years old and is considered probably the oldest city in Europe and unusually has two Roman Amphitheatres, one of them still holding performances and we watched them setting up for one on our way out to dinner.

Day 85 - Balchik to Sunny Beach

As we checked out of our hotel we were given a bottle of Bulgarian red wine because of the change of room, that's the way to make sure you aren't given a bad review.  There was also more discussion regarding snakes, spiders and crocodiles!

As we drove down the Black Sea coast we stopped off for coffee at Golden Sands and we were surprised to see a nice sandy beach for a change and lots of people swimming. We dipped our toes in the Black Sea and decided we would take a swim when we got to our destination of Sunny Beach.

We drove on to Nessebar for lunch which is an old town on an island that is now joined by a bridge, it is a popular day trip for people holidaying on the coast so was busy, hot and full of souvenir shops and fake designer clothing.

We checked into our hotel at Sunny Beach and spotted the amusement park next door, we had read reviews that is could be a little noisy but we didn't expect it to worry us. We got changed and headed to the beach and that's when the shock happened. We have never seen so many people at such a massive beach. Sunny Beach and it's neighbours are part of a huge bay and as far as you could see there were people, on the sand and in the ocean. Rather dumbfounded we went down to the waters edge and instead of being met with the blue ocean that we had seen on our entire three months we were looking at brown, murky water with things floating past that don't belong in the ocean. Very disappointing, too many people had polluted the beach. We decided to go for a walk but the more we saw the more we didn't like it, think Kuta Bali on steroids with no culture. Luckily we found an OK restaurant to pass some time.

By the time we got back to our room, passing the snake and iguana handlers, the tattooists and the alcohol stalls we found the amusement park in full swing outside our window - and that noise continued until 6am!

Day 84 - Bucharest to Balchik, Bulgaria

We left Bucharest and we were now in the "home stretch", our plan was to head over to the Black Sea before returning the car to Sofia.

We stopped at the port city of Constanta for lunch and found a nice marina section with some modern cafes, it felt nice to be back on the coast after so much time inland. The Black Sea isn't black at all but the same blue of seas all over the world, apparently it was named the Black Sea because it was inhospitable and difficult to navigate.

The coastal road was very busy and there were lots of parked cars and people coming back and forth from the beaches. It was summer holidays and also a Sunday so it was the same as any coastal strip back home.

At the Romania-Bulgaria border we really couldn't work out what was going on. We only seemed to have to show our papers to exit Romania and the Bulgarian side didn't seem interested in us so we just drove through. Arriving back in Bulgaria meant we were struggling with the language and signs again,. At least Romanian is latin/romance based so between English and Spanish we had some chance of reading things, with Bulgarian its a totally new alphabet.

We checked into our hotel at the beach side town of Balchik where they tried to tell us some story of why they didn't have the matrimonial room we had booked so could only get a twin room. The guy behind the desk seemed to have spent a lot of time watching the discovery channel and had many questions about Australia's scary animals from funnel web spiders to box jelly fish. Australians in this part of the world are apparently a rarity.

There was a small section of beach that actually had some sand and there was a nice promenade with lots of restaurants right on the water.

Day 83 - Bucharest

We walked down to check out the Parliament building, one of the biggest administration buildings in the world. We had heard a lot about on the walking tour the previous day, it was built by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, with a lot of money going into the building rather than helping the people of the country. It was a very impressive building but seemed ridiculously large for a country that isn't that big.

Day 82 - Bucharest

After a couple of weeks of cooler, rainy weather it was a bit of a surprise to find ourselves back in the heat and the weather forecast was for about 30 degrees.

We were also surprised when we turned up to the walking tour to see the group was upwards of 75 people and wasn't going to be split into groups, however the guide seemed quite entertaining so we decide to tag along to see how it went. We walked through the city as part of one of those large tourist masses that take up the entire footpath and block entrances and sights for other people. 

Vlad the Impaler

At times it was a little difficult to hear the guide and we didn't seem to cover much territory or significant attractions, but we did learn more about Romanian political history and also about Vlad the Impaler and how the Dracula story started.

Bucharest's "old town" is a bit different from the other old towns in as much as it is only 3 years old and has been built as an eating and drinking area for tourists. In the evening there were lots of restaurants and bars with outside seating, which with the warmer weather was very pleasant.

Day 81 - Sighisoara to Bucharest

There are a number of castles in Transylvania and we decided to visit two of them, Bran Castle and Peles Castle.

Our first stop was Bran Castle and we had read that there wasn't much to see inside so we decided to only view it from outside. What we hadn't considered was that there were so many trees, buildings, stalls selling tacky plastic Dracula paraphernalia and hordes of tourists that there was very little of it to see at all.

On the road leading to the castle we had passed many locals selling cute baskets of juicy looking raspberries and blackberries so on the way back out we decided to buy a basket through the car window. At 10 lei or $3 they seemed like a bargain however there were only 6 blackberries and a thin layer of raspberries, the basket was filled with leaves and timber! Ripped off in Transylvania.

We were now a little concerned at how busy Peles Castle might be, though so far Serbia and Romania haven't seemed that busy. We have found the Romanian architecture to be quite interesting as although is has element of other European countries mingled in it there are also aspects we haven't seen before.

At the gateway into Peles Castle were many buildings containing restaurants that were in the same architectural style of the castle and they gave the appearance that they were built as part of the same complex.

The castle wasn't as large as expected but was really interesting inside and out, even though we were only permitted access to a small section inside.

Our arrival into Bucharest coincided with peak hour and we questioned our Airbnb host as to where we should park, he said there was free street parking right out the front of the building and there would be someone there to meet us at 5.30. However the apartment was on Victory Boulevard, one of the major roads in Bucharest Old Town and when we arrived there was no one out the front and there was definitely no parking allowed. So we did what everyone else in these parts of the world do and we pulled over and stopped the car there anyway. K went to investigate while M stayed in the car.

It wasn't long though before the flashing lights and siren of a police car pulled up behind. Why when we have never seen them pull over anyone else who stopped illegally?!  M thought they would tell him to move on but instead they wanted to see his license and car papers. K explained to the other policeman the situation we were in so he phoned the host who said that the entrance and parking was in another street around the corner and that is where the person was waiting to check us in. The policeman was very helpful in sorting out the situation but this is another time when we are having second thoughts about using Airbnb because of the check in hassle, it shouldn't be that hard to give clear check instructions and information on parking.

Day 80 - Sibiu to Sighisoara

It was good to wake up to blue sky as we are a bit over the rain and we drove off to the Astra Open Air Museum. It consists of reconstructed old homes, churches and trades from Romania's past, basically Romania's version of Sovereign Hill in a much larger area and without the cheesy bits like people dressed up in costumes.

Driving onto Sighisorara we felt like we were in the authentic Romanian countryside, we passed many people on their horsedrawn wooden carts with the women wearing full skirts and cotton scarves on their heads. As we passed through villages there were many well dressed women with their thumbs out trying to hitch a ride, public transport must not be an option so hitching seemed to be a normal mode of transport. We also came across people standing by the road selling what were either copper or brass cooking and house utensils.

We were now in Transylvania, Vlad Tepes, better known as Dracula country and on entering the old town one of the first places was the house he was born in, we decided we didn't need to pay to go inside. The old town is quite small with only one central square but the area was popular with people having their wedding photos taken. Having dinner on the square we were entertained by two girls in traditional dress playing the violin, they pulled quite a crowd and added nicely to the atmosphere (as long as you didn't turn and see the stalls selling Dracula merchandise).

Day 79 - Belgrade to Sibiu, Romania

The first stop of the morning was a Ford service center to get the windscreen wiper fixed, luckily that was quite painless even though the man there didn't speak any English.

With that fixed we headed to the Romanian border. The border crossing was a quiet little outpost, the officers came out to the car, took our passports and asked to look in the boot. It seemed to take a while for them to come back with our passports and then the boom gate was lifted and we were across.

We drove to Timisoara, Romania's third largest city for a lunch break and found a park close to Unirii Square. From there a 10 minute walk took us through a number of different squares in the historical centre. Unirri is a large square with beautiful old buildings in different pastel colours.

Plata Victoriel was the last square where the buildings are 270 years older and architecturally different to many others we have seen. The colours are shades of brown and some are so large and dark they almost look frightening, although still interesting. The area had manicured garden beds and finished with the Romanian Orthodox Church with a patterned roof.

So far Romania seemed really interesting, though the rain drove us back to the car earlier than we would have liked. It would also have been nice to have spent a night in Timisoara to explore it more but we were running out of time until we needed to get back so we were travelling pretty quickly. 

Driving through the Romanian countryside and villages was interesting and there were some similarities to other countries we had visited in the last month or so with the ubiquitous sunflowers and the giant stork nests on top of power poles which now have multiple offspring testing their fledgling flying skills.

However, we also saw many women and girls in traditional clothes with full length skirts and cotton head scarves. The rain continued in patches on and off with breaks of sunshine. In April and May we had unseasonably hot weather and now in July we seemed to be getting unseasonable rain.

We kept pushing on to our destination for the night, Sibiu, this was one of the biggest driving days we have done on this trip and we didn't get to Sibiu until after 7pm. Our apartment was handy to the old town and we stopped at dinner next to the Bridge of Lies, myth has it that if you tell a lie while standing on the bridge it will collapse. M of course tried this just to prove it was a myth. Many of the buildings had tiny window like attics in their A frame roofs, the windows were shaped like eyes complete with eye lids.