Plovdiv and Batchkovo Monastery

So after another heavy night out in Komotini, we wearily got out of bed 5:30 in the morning, and made our way to the train station, to catch the train to Svilengrad, in southern Bulgaria. After a delay of over an hour, the train finally left. After a 4-hour journey, and some very "interesting" (or maybe more like very slow and inefficient) border formalities, we finally arrived in Bulgaria - only to see our train for Plovdiv pull out of the station. Which meant that we had to wait 3 hours - and let me tell you, Svilengrad is not a very happening place...



So we were quite happy when we eventually arrived in Plovdiv. It's the 2nd city of Bulgaria, and a very nice one at that. It has a lot of history, a very nice old town, and it's not very touristy (and very cheap!). We didn't have time to much in the evening, apart from finding lodgings at a nice hostel just outside the city centre.




We started Friday by having a walk around town, taking in the old Roman amphitheatre, apparently one of the best-preserved ones in the Balkans (and impressive it was, indeed!). After this, we took a minibus to Batchkovo Monastery, which as our guidebook told us is the 2nd most-important monastery in Bulgaria. For sure the tourist-trade peddlers had wised up to this fact - you could buy anything from holy water to plastic toy guns at the small stands lining up the road to the monastery.



The monastery itself was rally nice, though, located in a lush valley surrounded by tree-covered mountains. On the inside, it actually felt like a very beautiful and peaceful place, not too badly touched by commercialism. It is actually still a working monastery (which unfortunately meant we could only visit the church - which was very pretty, though).



We then took the bus back to Plovdiv and spent the rest of the day calmly exploring the beautiful old town - a really nice are with its cobble-stone streets anf national revival architecture. To finish off the day we walked up Bunardjika (Hill of the Liberators) - where we were rewarded by some great views overlooking the city. After this we had a very nice (and extremely reasonably-priced!) meal at a nice restaurant at the foot of the hill.

Thrace and Komotini

After the wedding festivities, we took the bus with Maria to Thrace, situated to the east of Thessaloniki, bordering Bulgaria and Turkey. It's a pretty interesting region, with plenty of Turkish influence (Muslim villages, mosques...).

Our destination for the next few days was Komotini, were we spent a few great days with Maria's family. My stomach especially has very pleasant memories from those few days - thanks to the delicacies of Maria's mother (and her dad's tsippuro is pretty darn good too!).



Again, we didn't get around to doing a lot of sight-seeing, because Komotini was even hotter than Thessaloniki. At its hottest, I think, the temperature was about 42 degrees (in the shade!). So we spent quite a lot of time on the beach instead, which was fine by us - it was nice to be able to relax for a bit since we would have some busy days ahead of us. The evenings we spent mostly in bars with Maria and friends of hers. Which is of course the best way to get to know a country - getting drunk with the locals :-).



We did get to do some sightseeing as well. On Monday, (in the evening, after it had cooled down!) we went to Xanthi (with me driving, which was almost as much "fun" as in Romania!), an old well-preserved Thracian city. Very pleasant indeed, with a nicely consistent old town, with well preserved buildings. The plan was also to visit Maroneia, a famous archaeological site, but unfortunately, it was closed.

But anyway, we spent a great few days in this refreshingly non-touristy part of Greece, with some great people!

Greek Wedding

Katerina, a friend of Mathilde's from her Erasmus days in Perugia, was getting married in Thessaloniki (in northern Greece). We decided to combine this event with our summer holidays, and make a bit of a road trip out of it, by going to Romania via. Bulgaria after the wedding. That's as much as there was to our plan - we basically only had our flight tickets to Thessaloniki and the return flight from Bucharest.



So, to get back to the Greek wedding... After a rather tiring flight (with a stopover in Milan), we finally arrived in Thessaloniki. We tried to do some sightseeing the day before the wedding, but it was quite a challenge - what with a temperature of nearly 40 degrees in the shade... We did manage to visit a couple of churches and walk along the seafront.

About lunchtime, some other friends from Perugia started arriving - so the afternoon was spent catching up on old times. We were quite a mixed group, with representatives from France (Mathilde, Milene and Sebastien), Spain (Ines and Paula), Greece (Maria), Italy (Giuseppe) and Finland (moi!) - so the conversation was quite multi-lingual! In the evening, Katerina organised a great Greek meal for us in a restaurant near our hotel, where we familiarised ourselves with the local cuisine and beverages...


On the Saturday, we had a little more time for sightseeing, and also a local guide (Maria), who took us to see the old city walls (with great views over the city), and a couple of churches, again.



In the evening, it was time for the wedding. It was a very grand affair indeed, with over 400 guests, with a great party at a very nice place in the foothills of Thessaloniki. Great food, drink and dancing (including some pretty interesting traditional Greek ones...), the works... Getting back to the hotel proved quite challenging, since it turned out that the guy who was supposed to take us had already left - and there were too many people to fit in the remaining car (although the enterprising and helpful unfortunate who had been selected for taxi service did try to get us all to fit...). So in the end I had to take a taxi back to the hotel (fortunately taxi prices in Greece are considerably more reasonable in Nice!).



On Sunday, everybody kept a pretty low profile. It was a day for misty-eyed farewells, as people took their flights back home. Except of course us - for us the journey was only beginning, as we boarded the bus for Komotini.

Vallon de Mollieres

So this time, we finally did go to the Alps for some walking. About time... (although in retrospect, we would probably have been better off heeding the weather forecast and staying at Nice...).




Our walk started near St-Saveur-sur-Tinee, in the Tinee valley. The walk took us through the Vallon de Mollieres, to the hamlet of Mollieres. The walk was very scenic, as expected, taking us through a leafy valley along a river up to an altitude of 1572 meters. We were even treated to some wildlife - we saw 2 snakes (including a adder).



Mollieres also has an interesting history... When the county of Nice (which used to be Italian until 1860) became French, Mollieres decided to stay with Italy. During World War 2, Mollieres served as a refuge camp for Italians and French. After being burnt down by German soldiers in 1944, Mollieres finally became French in 1947. But since then it's stayed uninhabited, apart from some buildings which have recently been renovated as summer houses. So it's almost like a ghost town (or more like ghost hamlet).



The walk back was rather unpleasant, because those ominous weather forecasts came true, and we ended up in the middle of a thunderstorm. Of course, it had to happen when we were as far away from the car as possible, as well... Oh well, next time we'll pay attention to the forecast ;-)

Ogranic market and Cap Ferrat

The tentative plan for today was, as last weekend, to head up to the Alps for some quality hiking. As always, our plans were hindered by too much beer on Friday night. We went to Mori's bar on Rue Massena, where I felt the need to try all the exotic Belgian beers on offer, especially the ones with over 10% alcoholic content (I tried two beers, which claimed to be the "strongest beer in the world"). So the result of this was that we did not go to the Alps today either...

Instead we had a look at Bionazur, an organic fare (or whatever you wanna call it), where they sold all sorts of organic products. After walking amongst the overpriced cosmetics stands (well, I assume so, I didn't look at the prices...) we eventually found one stand that sold some veggie. We were quite keen on the subject of organic food, having seen the very interesting and certainly eye-opening film called We feed the world. (I've only eaten chicken once since I saw this film ;-).



The afternoon the plan was to go snorkeling to Cap Ferrat. We made it to the beach, but didn't end up doing too much snorkeling because Mathilde was ferociously attacked by a jellyfish. Still, we spent a very pleasant afternoon at the beach...

Renaud concert

As a surprise for Mathilde, whose birthday is coming up, I decided to surprise her by getting some tickets to the Renaud concert, who was playing at Nikaia.

Renaud is a crusty old French protest singer (for lack of a better word)... A very famous geezer, who is a bit worse for wear these days because of having divorced his wife and drank way too much Pastis than what's good for you.... (which didn't do his voice a lot of good).



But in spite of this, the concert was absolutely brilliant! OK, so I didn't understand half of what the guy was saying (and even less of what he was singing), but the atmosphere was just great. One things for sure, this guy doesn't like the new French president... ;-) And he kept at it for more than 3 hours, not bad for an old geezer with 56 years on the meter...

Mont Vial

The sky was blue again this morning, so we decided to do a walk. So we took the Scenic and drove down the Var valley, and up towards Mont Vial. The road there was quite an interesting one, one might almost say scary - especially the last part as the road climbed up to the mountain top (at 1550 meters).



We were greeted with some truly amazing views, all the way down to the coast on one side, and all the way to the Alps on the other side (still snow-covered...). The sky as a bit overcast, but can't complain! We then walked along a ridge down to Col du Vial - and then back. A very nice walk - not too hard, with mercifully cool weather, and then we had those great views.



From there we drove down to the village next to the mountain - Tourette-du-Chateau. Nothing extraordinary, but a pleasant enough place. And then, back towards Nice...

La Route de Cretes & La Vallee du Loup

The original plan for today was to get up really early and drive up to the alps for some proper hiking. But unfortunately Sami talked us into joining him for some "quality" karaoke in Cafe de Nissa (hosted by local karaoke "legend" Ottavio) the night before - so we didn't get up quite as early as planned.

Also, the weather forecast wasn't that good, so we ended up doing something somewhat less ambitious. We decided to explore some of the pretty villages near the coast instead. We started by driving up the Route de Cretes, a pretty road that follows the Var valley - with some great views all the way to the alps (which are again snow-covered, actually). Our first stop was Carros, a pretty perched village. From there we drove to Coursegoules, which was also very pretty (we had some excellent crepes for lunch here).







From there, we drove down the Vallee du Loup (the Loup is a river - the name is actually derived from the Latin word for river). It's a very impressive drive, especially when driving through the Gorges du Loup (a kind of canyon, with very dramatic cliffs overlooking the river). Our first stop here was Bar-sur-Loup, which is a nice enough perched village. But we preferred Tourrettes-sur-Loup, which is definitely one of the prettiest villages on the Riviera. And only slightly touristy ;-)