Bulgaria part 2

The most known mountain national parks are Pirin and Rila. We stopped at the first one. Found a free camping site close to trekking routes and fantastic restaurant.

 What's great about Bulgaria is that most of the parking spots close to the attractions are for free.Other curiosity is that the places are not crowded. I don't know if it's because it's early or maybe bulgarians go to the mountains only in winter. There was more foreign tourists that bulgarians. Anyway we were stunned by the beauty of Pirin. Did a challenging red route, 1000m elevation gain so our legs were shaky at the end. So worth it though!

From there we were close to Belitsa Bear Park which is an animal sanctuary for bears that used to be in captivity, being used as a dancin g bears.This usance is banned since 1998 but was very popular in balcanic countries.There are about 15 of them. We got to see 5.Their eyes seemed sad. One of the bears behaviour affected me hard- she was continuously walking back and forward(around 5 metres in total). The guide told me that it was her chains length, back in the captivity. 


Before going to Plovdiv, the second biggest Bulgarian city we had a stop by the lake to get cold a bit.We knew what was awaiting us in the city - 35°C on average. Bulgarians like camping a lot! The whole lake was full of tents and roulottes, some of them left stationary for the whole season. Everyone was very discreet and respectful.

Plovdiv in Italian storically known as Filipoppoli is officially considered the oldest existing city in Europe with a history dating back as early as the 4th millenium BC.Although we were there to run errands we were positively surprised by it's beauty. We had to go to the mechanic so we found one on the internet. Thank god for Google translator and Google maps. We met Ivan that was extremely helpful and welcoming. He offered us a typical breakfast: banitsa( filo pastry filled with cheese)  and ayran ( salted drinking youghurt) in exchange for  porcini mushrooms  that we offered for his kindness. It even turned out that his daughter speaks perfect Italian so she was doing a live translation for us. 


After few days we were more than ready to escape the cities heat so we are now in Rodopi mountains, heading slowly to the coast.


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