A view from the balcony of our hotel across to the town. It does look superb with it's houses built into the hill.
Pretty interesting building overlooking a street in Melnik. It turned out to be a hotel and we definitely would have tried to stay there but Lonely Planet makes no mention of all the hotels high on the hill and it was a bit confusing in the dark when we arrived.
Had a drink at a wine-cellar dug into the rocks before hitting the road again. Actually these wine cellars get a bit of a write up in Lonely Planet but the only one we found was pretty bloody boring with some bloke at the top just hanging around waiting to make some door sales. We didn't think much of the wine either. There's supposed to be some famous house in town but it looks like it's been converted into a hotel. A strange fate for such a building and Lonely Planet makes no mention of that fact. Bit confusing.
Decided to stop in Sandanski on the way to our next stop. Great, huge town park; very long pedestrian mall. Pleasant stay, though I started to get a bit nervous when Neil (to save confusion I should point out that all references to Neil are to Sally's husband - really big Neil and not to merely Bigg Neil) hit a parked car. Luckily it just turned out to be our mirrors hitting and snapping back. There was a bloke sitting in the parked car. Neil said he could see him shaking his fist as we drove on.
Looking at the map we worked out we were pretty close to Greece so we decided to drive down to Greece for a meal. It was really pleasant.
We drove on through Gotse Delchev to Dospat. Dospat is a tiny place by a lake with what must be the cheapest hotel rooms in the world. $15 for a great room. The old woman who was in there late in the evening when we arrived didn't ask for money or passports.
A view of a bit of the lake at Dospat. Looks like being huge - artificially ceated hydro-lake I think.
We ate in a great restaurant where we had a heap of rakia and had an offer of mushroom picking in the morning.
A pic of Neil with our drinking mates in Dospat. It looks more like Neil's the local having just collared some passing tourists.
Dospat really was tiny with nothing really of interest apart from a pretty big mosque. No wonder so many of the women in town were wearing scarves. It's not to be forgotten that Bulgaria was ruled by Turkey for many, many years.
Actually the fences were pretty intererting. They seemed to consist solely of cleverly stacked firewood. I wonder whether in winter the fences slowly disappear?
I decided to see what would happen if someone decided to take their wood from the bottom of the pile.
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