This post almost wasn’t going to happen, because this day trip almost didn’t happen. Plovdiv was one of the original places I’d considered going on my trip to Bulgaria, but then I booked my hostels in Burgas and Varna only, since I didn’t think I’d have a car for my trip, so I thought Plovdiv was out of the picture.
But I heard such nice things about Plovdiv, that it was really special because it one of Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, so you can find things in it from so many different cultures and eras overlapping each other in the same city. The temporary manager at the Hug Center Hostel, James, told me that I must visit Plovdiv if at all possible, and I wouldn’t regret it…
He was right.
I spent 5 hours in the car for this adventure, 2.5 hours each way, but it was well worth it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It really was that special.
I got to Plovdiv just in time to park outside the city center and then take a quick cab to the meeting point outside city hall for my 11 am Free Plovdiv Tour with the wonderful and engaging guide, Niki.
We started on the pedestrian mall, the longest pedestrian mall in Europe, something Plovdiv is very proud to boast.
Ploviv has a ton of Roman ruins. Here is the Roman forum that you can walk through.
Beautiful, and I doubt it’s something most people would think of when they think of Bulgaria. I know I certainly didn’t expect this. (Then again, who expects Roman ruins in England, and there are those there as well… Those darn Romans got everywhere!)
The buildings for the most part were built in the European style, intentionally done when the pedestrian mall was made.
Our guide pointed out architecture that was more with the communist influence…
There was also lots of Ottoman era architecture.
The gate of the old city wall…
This old beautiful Ottoman era house that was turned into the ethnographic museum…
We got to see and hear a man playing the Bulgarian bagpipe. Never knew it was a thing. It has much fewer pipes than a Scottish one.
We explored the Kapana arts and crafts district, formerly the market district, the “trap”.
We saw the Djumaya Mosque built in the 1500s…
We learned about the legendary man named Milyo, who brought luck in relationships…
This part felt like it could have been in any other European city, whether Chania in Crete, or even in Tbilisi, Georgia (I know that isn’t European, but they’re trying to look and become European).
We climbed the hill of Nebet Tepe, with ruins going back 4000 years, and a view overlooking the rest of Plovdiv.
We learned about the different hills in Plovdiv and what they are known for, and which ones we could see in the distance. One of the hills is gone, as it was mined to build the city, and now a mall stands in its place, Markovo Tepe.
We saw a mountain called Bunardzhik tepe with a statue of a Russian soldier on it, the Alyosha monument, and were told about the controversy around it. She told us that people can climb the mountain to see it so I decided I’d do that later.
The last thing on our tour was the Roman theater. (We also saw the Roman stadium earlier, I just didn’t have pictures.)
I paid the tour guide 10 leva, about $5.95, standard tip for a free tour.
We got instructions how to walk back to our starting point… but I had a problem…
I was in such a rush to get to the tour that I didn’t pay enough attention to where I parked my car, and since I took a taxi from my car to the start of the class I couldn’t just retrace my steps…
I had to figure out where I parked my car. And that wasn’t easy.
I sat in a coffee shop with my computer open in front of me, Google Maps open, trying to remember the streets I saw on the map on the drive, looking for a place to park. (I didn’t park at the parking lot that Waze had directed me to since I found a parking spot on the way.)
Eventually, using the help of some really lovely young women in the coffee shop who helped me identify the roads based on landmarks I remembered, and what Waze showed me was the area that I had been headed towards, I was able to use Google Maps’ street view to go down the streets until I identified the area where I parked and was able to breathe a sigh of releif. This only took me about an hour. I had tried calling the rental car company twice, to ask them if they had GPS in their cars and could locate it for me, but they didn’t answer the phone so I was entirely on my own there.
Finally, once I knew where my car was, I walked there… and passed more Roman ruins on the way…
Finally, I could breathe a sigh of relief when I recognized the area where I parked and found my car.
I drove to Bunardzhik tepe so I could climb up to the monument and looked for a place to park. The only place to park nearby that I found was in the parking lot of the mall, Markovo Tepe, that was in the place of the previously demolished hill.
There were stairs leading up the hill, and there was this nice fountain with sculptures that I sat to rest underneath.
Climbing up was beautiful, the air crisp, and the view spectacular. Only problem was the I’d forgotten my inhaler back in the hostel, so I was out of breath and needed to stop often.
There were so many wild edible plants I saw along the way, some that I ate as I was climbing, and some that I foraged to eat for supper that day and the next, but that will have to be saved for a foraging in Bulgaria post…
Eventually the top of the hill was in sight, just a few more steps.
I got there!
I sat at the top, recovering, chatting with another tourist who made the same climb, looking out over the view. Google tells me there are 100 steps and 50-100 meters in elevation from the rest of the city, so I don’t know if the 100 steps are accurate, but there also is a lot of walking uphill, just not via steps.
It was worth it.
A nice bit of exercise after the exercise of the 2 hour walking tour.
I walked back down and stopped in the mall to go to Billa, the chain grocery store, to buy groceries to bring back to the hostel, since I’d only managed the bare minimum in terms of grocery shopping the day before when I arrived…
And then I drove the 2.5 hours back to Burgas.
Long day.
Definitely worth it.
I was on a high the whole day. Other than when I couldn’t find my car. That was the opposite of a high. But the rest? I’d drive 5 hours in a day again to go somewhere like Plovdiv and have an experience like that again.
Have you ever been to Plovdiv? Would you drive 5 hours in a day to go on a day trip like this? Would you associate Bulgaria with Roman ruins? Ever lost a car?
One Response
Enjoy! But please be careful not to injure yourself.