Melnik, Saturday 29th

Next stop Melnik. Small town not far from the Greek border; famous for its winery.


Dropped in for a drink at a tiny village on the way though. Here's one of the locals.

On inspection of the pasporta servo book I discovered that there is an Esperantist in a town 35 kilometers away. In the opposite direction to where we were heading... but the others agreed that it would be interesting so that's where we decided to head to after looking around the monastery.

But before we got that far, I'd spotted a sign near our hotel saying that there's a church 30 minutes away in the hills so I suggested we go for a walk. An hour later even after running some of the way, no church and the top of the mountain not even in sight - I gave up. I broke the news to the others who were a bit behind me and we started back down the hill. Hidden behind some branches, on a tree further down was a sign pointing up another mountain - so no doubt we'd taken a wrong turn.



Back near the bottom Sally spotted some horses with wooden saddles. Of course she had to go over for a pat.

Since I was at the monastery last - the number of tourists seems to have increased dramatically. It's also no longer allowed to wander about in the upper floors of the monastery. All in all the scene is still pretty good and late in the day or early in the morning it's probably still pretty peaceful And the setting is still amazing.



It's almost a pity to include a photo of the monastery as it's impossible to capture how impressive it is in a picture. But it is worth including it to save me having to type an extra thousand words on the pocket pc.

So, off to Samokov! Actually, because of the mountains separating us, we had to take an indirect road so the 36 kilometers took something like 2 hours Anyway, we found the village and the address. And we also found an extremely friendly, jovial Esperantist. He has a very nice house and they had actually prepared lunch but with our quest in the mountains we ended up being about 3 hours late. But we still got a meal. A superb meal in fact with a typically Bulgarian cold yogurt and cucumber soup. Our Esperantist turned out to be a huge success as we were treated to some great hospitalty.



Saying good-bye to part of the Esperanto family.



More good-byes.

Then on we pressed to Melnik.

Got there pretty late so straight to find a hotel, something to eat and bed No idea what the place looks like yet.