Official:
Day 5 – Koprivshtitsa – Hisaraya After breakfast we visit two famous ‘house museums’ to learn more about this Bulgarian town, steeped in literary, political and philosophical history. We then saddle up and pedal through rolling terrain among the vast meadows that frame this land. A long descent into Strelcha town passes the ”Crooked Beech Tree” and some interesting rock formations once used by the ancient Thracians for their sacred rituals. On the way we visit an ancient Thracian cult temple from the 5th century B.C. and have lunch at a local winery. From here on the road rolls calmly all the way to our next destination – Hisarya, famous for its thermal springs and Roman ruins. End the day with a relaxing soak. C Comfort. Ride 67 km.

( Note the house tours in the summary above we actually did yesterday… )

Me:
Pretty tired after a long day and another big meal for dinner. So just some bullet points on the day…

A nice descent started our day and clear sky greeted our morning.

We stopped to see a huge beach tree, possibly a couple hundred years old you’ll see in the photos below. Amazing!

The rose oil factory at the bottom of the hill was very interesting, the Rose leaves are picked in the morning from 5 AM to 10 AM only, while moisture content is highest. Once picked, they are put into large bags and brought to the factory and weighed for payment. Essentially they are boiled in water, and then the same process of distilling alcohol is used where the Rose oil vapor is captured. A kilo of rose oil can cost close to €9000!

After this we continued cycling through a portion of wine country. Bulgarian wines are world renowned, we stopped at a winery restaurant that had fantastic food and an incredibly wonderful house wine, a Cabernet/Merlot blend. Because we were visiting a Thracian monument after lunch in the van, versus getting on the bikes right away, everybody elected to have a glass of wine with lunch. Normally nobody drinks any alcohol at lunch ever, it doesn’t mix well with biking at all. But the lunch and the wine was spectacular!

We rode another 20 km to Hyasar where we are staying the night in a pretty nice hotel. It is a town surrounded by remnants of a fourth century wall that is pretty amazing when you think of how old that is!

Along the way we saw at least four stork nests, always perched on top of a very high structure, whether it be a power pole or church steeple. Pretty cool!

Unfortunate:
Paul and Valerie had bought a few bottles of wine to share with the group later in the trip at the winery. As Orlan the guide was offloading the bags from the van at the hotel, he accidentally knocked the box over and four bottles of wine broke on the ground. Tragic!

After that we walked around the city park and a portion of the town, also saw other Roman ruins that are still present.

Fortunate:

You may notice in the photos right after the picture of my room, there is a picture of a dog standing on top of the doghouse. That dog is about 20 yards from the balcony of my room. I’m always so comforted when dogs are that close to me… It always makes me feel very very special! And so fortunate…

For dinner, the guides took us to a restaurant they highly recommended, but it was one of those ones you can sort of tell was organized for foreigners. Much more expensive than we normally eat, the quality of the food was moderate, but there were some interesting things to order such as grilled salmon. Consequently however, no photos of our dinner as it was not noteworthy in that sense…

Tired after a relatively long day of cycling, perhaps the most pleasant cycling day so far. Happy to be alive and well, able to do trips like this!

Tomorrow we transfer to Plovdiv for a rest day. Looking forward to that!