Bulgaria

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Country #90. Today & tomorrow were originally scheduled for a 2-day tour of the Danube Delta. It might have been a happier choice for us, alas when we started booking we couldn't find a tour that would work in our schedule. So this was 2nd choice. Today's full day tour and tomorrow a rest/laundry day. We had the option of doing basically today's tour from the river cruise included excursions but they would be big groups and they described them as strenuous. I didn't want to find myself unable to keep up so today's private tour seemed a good idea at the time. It didn't really work out. We visited Basarbovo Monastery instead of the rock hewn churches of Ivanovo without explanation. We were most concerned with getting up the hill to Tsarevets Fortress. Our guide was confident that we could get a 20-minute walk closer than groups by having a private vehicle and then he'd take us on a short-cut walk and we'd take our time. Unfortunately, when we reached Veliko Tarnovo the road we needed to make all that happen was closed. He tried for an alternate route, but it was more of a donkey track than a road and there were a lot of cars attempting it because of the road closure. I suggested we just skip the fortress and after some harrowing narrow rock lane maneuvering, we did skip it. I was less upset about that given the bright sunshine, high temps and no shade than missing the churches. Anyway, it was a long drive in an ACed van and not a big bus tour and it got us out of the city. We drove across the Danube twice and saw some barge traffic so fingers crossed the river boat will be sailing in a few weeks.

We left at 7:30 am and returned to the hotel about 7 pm. We both decided we were too exhausted and not hungry enough to go out to eat. Our guide recommended a restaurant but we didn't know where it was. We came in and Googled it to find that they have Clay's favorite pork knuckle. We'd have to share it again and we didn't want to go for that without being hungry. We ate protein bars with ice water for dinner.  Maybe tomorrow.

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