Winter's Coming (Bansko ~ Bulgaria)

October 2019

Bansko is to Bulgaria as Queenstown is to New Zealand but a bit nicer with a cobblestoned old town and some historic stone and timber fortress houses.

Our plan was to do some walking in the Pirin mountains above Bansko as we understood that the cable car from the town up into the mountains operates year round. Which technically is true as in the off season the cable car does a single run up the mountain at 8:30am and a single run down at 4:30pm. Trouble is the forecast was for overcast and the occasional shower and a high of about 12 degrees (meaning it would be low single digits at 8:30am and at 4:30pm) - decided a mountain walk would not be a good idea. In fact in the whole time we were there we only had a clear view of the mountains for about 15 minutes.

Instead walked to the village next door and spent the afternoon chilling in the the thermal hot pools there. One nice feature of the thermal regions here is the lack of the sulferous rotten egg smell that is normally associated with thermal regions.

Did manage to visit one of the famous Fotress Houses, Velyans House, whilst here. It's an 18th century mansion with some quite elaborate surviving frescoes on the exterior and interior walls.

  
Some odd sculptures were spotted round town which I assume are to do with with either the change of the seasons or harvesting. On a side note have found that roast pumpkin is big in Bulgaria. Seen quite a few street stalls selling chunks of well roasted (caramelised) pumpkin.

The other food that Bulgarians seem to love is horse meat - apparently there was a major scandal about ten years ago when Bulgarian Lasagne was sold in Ireland with horse rather than beef as labeled. Have to say that there can be no mistake as to the contents of this jar.

Mmmm - jellied horse meat chunks.

From here our next, and last stop in Bulgaria,  is Sofia.