Archives

All posts for the month September, 2017

Mark & I atop one of Plovdiv’s seven hills (shades of Rome), amidst Roman & Ottoman ruins

Plovdiv feels like a small city or even just a big town but in fact with a population of nearly 350,000 people, it is Bulgaria’s second largest city. We were here once before, in 2010 when we came to Bulgaria for a wedding. It was a brief, one-night stop and I didn’t really remember anything except that I liked it. Mark remembered a great areas of loungy, outdoor restaurants and cafés that we couldn’t find, if it in fact ever existed. What we found here, though, we loved.

There were two distinct parts of Plovdiv we liked, some interesting Roman ruins and beautiful modern parks. That, a wonderful, airy, and inexpensive hotel room, and some great meals is pretty much all you need for a great stop.

First, the modern city. Just a couple blocks from our hotel was a big, beautiful modern park with seemingly dozens of fountains and hundreds of nice benches in the shade. I’m always amused when I get to these cities that are measurably poorer than, say, Boston, that are able to maintain these beautiful parks and fountains. In Boston, for most of the 15 years we lived there they couldn’t keep the main fountain in the Commons working. In Plovdiv the fountains were almost limitless. Along with nice maintenance and more benches than they could ever need, it was pretty nice.

A city of beautiful fountains

As for the old part of the city, this is a place that was conquered by Philip of Macedon in the 4th century BC – after which it was known for many centuries as Philippopolis – so it has a long history. (Now, to be honest, there is evidence of human settlements dating back to the 6th millennium BC, so it is in fact really old. It thus claims to be one of the oldest settlements in Europe but it seems to me that I’ve seen that claim too many places to give it that much credence.) And then for several centuries in the comparatively more recent past it was under the control of the Ottomans who also left there marks here.

The main ruins in town are a big old Roman theater and, not that far away in today’s modern city, another, seemingly smaller Roman stadium. Not many cities claim two ancient Roman theaters. The oldest, the Ancient Theater, was built in the first century AD and is probably the most famous ancient site in all of Bulgaria. We’ve seen a lot of old Roman theaters and are probably a bit jaded, but this one was in pretty good shape. The Roman Stadium dates from the second century AD and while today’s ruins are smaller, the stadium was once huge, supposedly holding up to 30,000 spectators.

The first century Roman theater

And the second century Roman stadium

We would have stayed longer – it really is a lovely town that deserved more than two nights – but something must have been going on because the third night everything was just booked. So we headed on west to the Black Sea.

A highlight of Plovdiv for us was this penthouse hotel room with a big wrap-around deck that made for ideal clothes drying. Oh yeah, and made the interior wonderfully bright and airy. There were those 67 steps to climb every time we came and left (no elevator) but it was worth it.

One of the more delightful lunches we’ve had in a long time was in this little private garden. The weather was perfect, the setting lovely, and it was just the two of us. Seemed too good to be true; if you’re ever in Plovdiv go to Hebros for lunch!

Great street scene in Plovdiv

Some beautiful buildings there, too

A quiet corner of the old town

The park near our hotel was beautiful. I used to wonder who those people were who had time to while away the afternoons sitting in a park reading. Now I know: it’s me!

A big giraffe on the edge of that park

Mark at lunch at Hemingway’s right across the street from our hotel. We went back for dinner and I had to fight with the staff. Our hotel gave us a card for 10 percent off at the restaurant but when the bill came, they only wanted to give us the discount on the food, not the wine (notwithstanding the fact that wine has a far bigger markup than food). Eventually I got the discount. Apparently I’m getting more like my father-in-law all the time.

How’s that for making us feel welcome?

We didn’t see a lot of highlights in Sofia, but the cathedral was pretty impressive

From Macedonia it was east to Bulgaria. We’re still in the Balkans but no longer in the former Yugoslavia; the development of an independent Bulgaria dates back to about the 7th century AD when the Bulgarian Empire emerged to dominate most of the Balkan Peninsula. Of course, given that this is still the Balkans, Bulgarians think of that greater Bulgarian empire as their natural border.

On the long drive from Bitola we stopped for lunch at a lakeside restaurant in Veles, Macedonia. It wasn’t great dining but it was a pleasant stop. And that wine you see was just for me; Mark was driving so I got to enjoy it on my own.

We were here once before when we came to a wedding in 2010. We only spent one night in Sophia then, but we loved it and have always wanted to come back. Despite the recent history as a Soviet satellite, Bulgaria had quickly emerged in the 1990s as a full-fledged member of the European Union complete with cafés and all that kind of pleasant life. Unfortunately, on this pass through we had a bunch of errands to do – especially the need to work with the U.S. embassy and get new passports – and still didn’t really get to enjoy the city that much.

The embassy is stuck a pretty fair distance from the center of the city and they make it really difficult to accomplish things. Ultimately they set an appointment for us, but somehow neglected to tell us that to get access to the embassy you couldn’t bring any electronic gear larger than a cell phone. No Kindle, no iPad. Do they know what decade this is? So we show up for our appointment – our really hard-to-get appointment – and are told, no, you can’t enter with those devices that we always have with us. What are we supposed to do? It’s not as though the security-conscious embassy is going to take kindly to us just trying to hide our little purses in the bushes or something.

So we decide that I’ll take stuff back to the hotel (some two miles away) as quickly as I can and try to get back for the appointment. Fortunately a Bulgarian guard at the embassy took pity on me and told me of a grocery store just a few hundred meters down the street that had lockers where I could store my stuff. Ultimately that worked, I made the appointment, and we have new passports coming.

Borisova Gradina Park (Boris’ Garden, named for Tsar Boris) is a massive expanse surprisingly near the city center. You wonder if it’s safe to walk these endless and isolated paths? This elderly woman, walking around 6:30 in the evening, seems to think so.

Besides that, yes, we got to enjoy the cafés a bit. There are a couple of absolutely huge parks near the city center with miles and miles of great trails for walking and biking and running and sitting and all that, and some good food. Ultimately, though, we didn’t get to see a great deal of Sophia. From here we’re east-bound toward the Black Sea but we have to come back to pick up our passports – we don’t know precisely when as they can take anywhere from five to 10 business days to produce – so maybe then we’ll have more time to explore and enjoy Sofia.

St. George Church, smack in the middle of the city, dates back to the 4th century and is by far the oldest building in Sofia

And a view from the inside of Bulgaria’s cathedral. Bulgarian Orthodox churches are surprisingly empty compared to Roman Catholic churches. We learned after taking this that we weren’t supposed to take pictures inside the cathedral but it’s not as though they could take this away from us…

Bitola’s highlight was the great floor mosaics at Heraclea, a city founded by Philip of Macedon and named for the Greek hero Hercules

Sometimes we go to these off-the-beaten track places like Ohrid and hit a home run. We loved it. Then there’s Bitola, not exactly a strike out, but kind of a lazy fly ball.

Bitola is Macedonia’s second largest city, down in the southwestern part of the country and just a little north of the border with Greece. It was founded by Philip of Macedon in the 4th century BC and for many years was a key cultural, educational, and commercial hub. From the time of the Ottomans it was known as the “City of Consuls” as so many nations had consuls here. So it sounded interesting.

Bitola’s main pedestrian thoroughfare

More interesting than it was, it turns out. There was a lively street of outdoor cafes and that was fun but it was kind of limited. There were some ruins about a mile out of town that were worth an hour or so. Mostly the ruins were pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, but the mosaics, covered up for some 1,400 years, were pretty impressive. And I loved a bit of the history: the city was an important part of the Byzantine empire but was sacked by a rising threat to Byzantium, a guy named Theodoric. Ultimately Emperor Zeno convinced Theodoric to turn his attention to the remnants of the Western Roman Empire instead, which Theodoric proceeded to conquer in the late 5th century. As Rome in those days was something of a … how do you say it? Shit hole? … he made Ravenna his capital and developed the fantastic mosaics we fell in love with last summer.

More of the mosaics, in really remarkable condition

But for those ruins, though – and even they were at best a brief visit – there wasn’t a lot to see. So I did what I liked to do when there’s not a lot to do and climbed up a big hill out of the city to look down. And that’s it. From here we move into Bulgaria, a country we visited and loved back in 2010.

Looking down on Bitola from high atop a neighboring hill

That church up there was my goal and I took the rainbow as a good omen

Macedonia’s countryside, looking away from Bitola

Not all of Bitola was this run down, but it is obviously a poor city in a poor country. Traveling here helps me understand the frustration many Macedonians feel about all the money being spent to spruce up Skopje

Macedonia is primarily Christian, but it was founded as an explicitly multi-cultural country and you see many mosques as you travel around. I have to say that I love the towering minarets you see as you drive through the country.