Bulgaria ~ Day 3

Yet another update from my Kindle!

Woke up at three in the morning due to the freezing cold, fumbled around for my coat and two blankets, inadvertently waking Ting in the process. She was like, "What's she doing? Why is she going outside? It didn't occur to me that you were cold because I was pretty warm." Great.

Had a shower when it was the correct time to awaken, and headed to the information centre to try to figure out a plan of action for the day. When we realised that the place didn't open until ten, we decided to - you guess it - go get food! We hung out in a smoky cafe for a while, me on the hot chocolate, and after we found out what we wanted to know, we went to buy museum tickets to see the six restored houses.

On our way to one of them, i took a detour and stopped to buy a hat and two pairs of knee length socks imported from Korea. All in the name of not freezing to death. We went to two houses before lunch - both were such charming buildings, rustic and quaint in a way that no Western house can ever hope to replicate. For lunch, we ate at what the guidebook described as an 'uninspiring' restaurant which was a pretty accurate summary. Nevertheless, I ordered shepherd's salad, chips, grilled peppers and krvarma.

Afterwards, we visited a market and another house before climbing into the mountainside to see a monument - that was my favourite part of the day. I saw crystals growing from a stream which came from a hole in the ground, posed underneath the backside of the horse statue, and drank in the wonderful sight of the village spread out before me. Going down, I finally came across an elusive horse drawn cart - Ting's reaction to my gasp was: "I thought someone was about to attack us. But no, it's just a horse."

We went to two more houses, a church and the Bridge of the First Shot. Somewhere in between those, I ended up buying a rug, some handknitted socks which are damn cool, matching mittens and a jar of rose petal jam. Om nom nom.

Then we went back to our room and napped until seven thirty, which of course was food time. The restaurant from yesterday was not open, so we tried out one close by - it turned out to be alright. We decided to share so ordered lamb drobsarma, shepherd's salad, sausage and haricot stew, stuffed peppers and strawberry yoghurt. After consistently ordering so much food and spending so much money on inanimate souvenirs, now I'm slightly worried about how I will manage for the rest of the week...