[insert missing posts here]
26Oct09
(posted by stuartgrant)Hello everyone!
Long time, no post. Well… it feels like a very long time for us since we’ve been on the road. Detailed posts of our travels will follow, but I thought it would be a good idea to give you a run-down of what we’ve been up to.
Tuesday 20th Oct: we left Haskovo on a brisk morning and caught the bus to Plovdiv (pop. 450,000), about an hour to the northeast. We wandered around the lovely old-town and stayed at a cool hostel up on the hill. Apart from being woken up at 5am by three drunken backpackers as they returned to their (and our) dorm… it was a good time.
Wednesday 21st Oct: got on a midday train to Septemvri (pop. bugger all) to connect to a wonderful narrow-gauge train to Bansko (pop. 10,000) – which is a ski resort town up in the Pirin Mountains. The train took 6 hours – whereas the bus would be 3 hours – but it was incredibly picturesque (we took 150 photos and Humf took 200).
Thursday 22nd Oct: stayed at a lovely hotel hosted by the gregarious and hilarious Boris. He organised a driver to take us up the mountains. We were dropped off at Banderitsa Hut (altitude 1800m) where we started the walk up Mt. Vihren (the highest peak in the Pirin mountains – 2914m). Wow – what an amazing walk! We walked up into the snow (from about 2000m up) and just kept ascending. The sign said 3hrs to the peak, but we took over 4 hours to get to Vihren Pass (alt. 2600m) and decided to call it a day. We have some great photos to share (soon!). We exhaustedly hitch-hiked back down the mountain (after walking for an hour!) and slept for 11 hours that night!
Friday 23rd Oct: said farewell to Boris (who seemed disappointed to see us go) and caught a bus to Sofia (due North – the capital of Bulgaria with a population of about 1,500,000). Sofia is not our favourite city – and Humf was less than impressed with it. But we wandered around for the afternoon before catching the overnight train to Bucharest. Our train was great! So happy we didn’t get the bus instead.
Saturday 24th Oct: arrived in chilly Bucharest (capital of Romania, pop. 3,000,000) at 5:45am. We sat in McDonalds and drank awful coffee so we could have wi-fi access. We needed to look up some essential information, like the Romanian words for “yes” and “no” … and where the bus station was. We were all so tired we didn’t think to get a taxi so instead walked for 3.5 hours around the (beautiful) city to find the bus station. We then caught a mini-bus to Târgu Mureş – where our good friends Jon, Margot and James Nairn are living.
Sunday 25th Oct: we went to a Romanian church service and sang some Hillsong tunes with Romanian words. That was cool. Then James took us to play paintball against a few of his friends. It was awesome! Humf shot me from about 3m away (his reflexes were quicker than his ability to remember the “5m rule”!) and I’ve got an impressive wound from it – don’t tell him, but it looks much worse than it feels!
Monday 26th Oct: we’re about to go shopping around Târgu Mureş but have been prevented from doing so because I’m sitting here blogging! Oh nu.
So, this is my promise that we’ll be blogging in more detail – with awesome photos – very soon!
Also, check out Humf’s blog soon – he’s closer to writing a proper post!
Cheers
Stuart.
Tags: Bulgaria, holidays, Romania, travelling
Dan – Bandit Chronicles
Imogen – Over the hills and far away…
Nature Writer – Peter Grant
Sam's Bits and Pieces
The Chronicles of Humphrey
One comment so far for “[insert missing posts here]”
26Oct 2009 at 3:11 pm :
Great overview Stu!
Although you failed to point out how much I was whingeing while we were walking around Bucureşti. Could have been the cold, or the 16kg pack I was carrying, or the 3-4 hours, or the lack of sleep. Elly’s quote was, “You know it’s bad when Humphrey starts whingeing”
Yeah, I can def see why there is a 5m rule – I think we need to go paintballing again. Maybe (if you are sneaky sneaky) you can return some vengeance?