Plovdiv

Tuesday July 10

Last night we stayed in Plovdiv. Pretty fancy hotel with red carpet leading in. It looked like it was probably built in the 30s but interior decorating was still very much Eastern block style I thought. I particularly liked the pink leather couches with bright green wicker accents. :-) It definitely was good to have some relaxing time after a long day on the bus. This morning we had a walking tour of Plovdiv through the old town. We watched some workers renovating a house. They had all of their old materials that they’d taken out of the building, piled in to very neat piles to use again. The centre of the town had a Roman Amphitheatre that had been excavated in the 80s. Last night Aida was performed there. They were taking down the set as we had a look from above. How cool it would have been to have gone to that!

Rrrrrina, my rrrroomie’s family comes from a village (Brrrestovitsa) near Plovdiv. She hasn’t been there for 29 years. Her cousins came to pick her up last night and she spent the night with her relatives in the villages. We tried to see if perhaps we could all go pick her up in the morning but that didn’t work out so well with the tour guide and the bus driver. She was very excited and told us all about it over the microphone on the bus.