After a kind of do nothing day yesterday, Nathan and I packed up and headed to Plovdiv this afternoon.

The bus didn’t leave until 1:30 so we, once again, had plenty of time to ourselves before then.

A boring morning

After waking up at 9am and packing everything up, we headed out for breakfast an hour later.

I really wanted that deconstructed breakfast burger again like I had the other morning so I talked Nathan into popping over there for breakfast.

Granted, it wasn’t really that hard of a sell.

Hit the spot!

Yeah, I had a burger for breakfast!   Don’t judge me!

After breakfast we headed back to the hostel and just played cards for the rest of the morning.

At around 12:30 we grabbed a taxi to the West Bus Station.

The bus ride to Plovdiv

For some reason, I had in my head that the bus we’d taking would be a normal sized bus.

You know, a normal one.   With air conditioning and all that jazz.

It wasn’t.

I mean it did have an adequate amount of a/c but it wasn’t like the “ah, blast in your face” kind of a/c, ya know.

Also, it was more of a caravan seating 15 people rather than a bus.

The trip from Veliko Tarnovo by car only takes 2 1/2 hours but our bus trip was scheduled to take two hours longer because of a few stops in towns we made along the way.

Each time we’d stop in a new city, we’d have a half hour break off the bus just wandering around.

Our first stop wasn’t even at a bus station, it was more of a café/restaurant.   I just hung out inside watching a Bulgarian dubbed episode of Naked and Afraid.

First time I’ve seen it and, although in Bulgarian, I have to say, what the hell is this show?!?

Anyway…

Moving on…

The half hour breaks were actually nice to break up the 4 1/2 hour ride.   We had a half hour break twice during the trip and we weren’t really in the bus longer than an hour at a time so the trip seemed like it went faster.

Hello, Plovdiv!

We arrived in Plovdiv at 6pm to thunderstorms.   Well, it was heavy rain on the last stretch into the city but had subsided to a light rain by the time we got off the bus.

Even still, we were getting a little bit wet and, ya know what, I didn’t care.

I didn’t even fish out my umbrella from my big backpack.

I welcomed the rain after almost 2 weeks in a heatwave.   It was definitely a welcome sight.

Before I left for this trip, I had figured out which local bus we had to take to get from the bus station to our hostel.   I had it mapped out and everything.

The bus stop was just around the corner…

Um, where all the construction is.

And the bus stop?

Closed and redirected somewhere.

Guess we’re walking to the hostel.

At least it wasn’t uphill and we had the rain and it was only 20 minutes.

Dinner with cats

After checking in, we headed straight out to get some dinner.   We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and we were both starving.

We went to a restaurant the guy at the hostel recommended.

It turned out to be a questionable recommendation.

They had a pretty extensive menu and I settled on a couple dishes I hadn’t tried before.

As an starter, I had pig’s ears and for dinner I had veal neck.

The pig’s ears weren’t bad but, man, were they chewy.

The veal, though, was so dry and really unappetizing.

Luckily there was a little horde of kittens walking around the outdoor patio is search of food.

Boy, were they in luck!

I fed most of my meal to the 5 kittens surrounding me and, of course, they latched on to me even when all the food was gone.

Well, even if my meal wasn’t that great, at least I made some kittens very happy.

For dessert I had a ice cream sundae.

It was ridiculously big and, oh so good.   It was literally overflowing from the sundae dish and I had to quickly eat it so it wouldn’t go onto the table.

It was literally a mashup of different fruits (banana, peach, orange, kiwi, apple) with 4 different scoops of ice cream on top (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, banana) and then topped with whip cream.

And, of course, gluten free!

One of the top desserts I’ve ever had and, trust me, I’ve had alot over the years.

Anyway, the meal was kinda meh, but feeding the cats and the incredible dessert kind of made up for it.

By 9pm we were back at the hostel and after a well deserved nice, long, hot shower, that was it for the night.

Tomorrow we plan on exploring Plovdiv on a free walking tour and then the next day we have a cool day trip planned so stay tuned…