We both managed a good nights sleep last night after the Folk Night. Below are a couple of pictures of the group.
We hadn’t moved since our 10 minute cruise across the Danube to Bulgaria last night. After breakfast we headed out on a gentle walking tour of the city. The “gentle walking tour” differed from the walking tour in so much that we had a coach trip into town, the other walked. Maybe later in the week we’ll be recovered enough to dispense wit the coach!
The first noticeable thing about Bulgaria is the written language. In Romania they used the Latin alphabet, and it was quite easy to translate a lot of the words. Here they use the Cyrillic alphabet, any form of translation fails!!
I always thought that the Cyrillic alphabet was a product of Russia, I was wrong! It started in Bulgaria in the 9th century and spread to neighbouring countries, as far east as Mongolia. It is credited with saving the identity (and country) of Bulgaria.
We docked near the town of Rousse or Ruse, Link and took a coach up into the centre. From here started the walking tour, mainly around the main square. Rousse has it’s own “Statue of Liberty” built in 1909 to celebrate the countries release from the Otterman empire.
Below are a couple of pictures, unfortunately the front view was directly into the sun, so there is a second view from the rear!
Another historic monument in the square is to the 5th Danube Infantry who took part in the Serbo Bulgarian war of 1885
There are many buildings around the perimeter of the square.
After all our strenuous (!) walking, our guide decided we needed fortification in the form of cake and coffee. The cake was to be the famous Garash cake, this was created by the same person who created the famous Sacha Torte in Vienna, but this time he varied the recipe quite a bit. It was created without flour, without oil, but with a lot of butter, with walnuts, cocoa and a lot of chocolate. It was WAY better than the original, light, moist and very chocolatey! I found the original heavy, dry and fairly tasteless.
Below is a picture of the restaurant.
Once the cake was devoured we did a little more exploring, and then back to the bus to return to the boat.
After a (light) lunch, the boat got underway and we headed westwards along the Danube.
None of the staterooms have balconies per se, what they do have is a wall to wall, floor to ceiling panoramic window split horizontally. The top half of the window can be lowered with a touch of the button and you now have a balcony! This is great as it increases the size of the room, but still gives that outside feeling.