Beaches, Ruins and Yogurt

It's been a while since my last update, but we have now left Romania, and are in Bulgaria, the land of yogurt. It's everywhere.... and delicious. The rest of Romania was nothing too special. Some advice for anybody thinking of going there: stay away from touristy Transylvania, and stick with the amazing north (Maramures and Southern Bucovina). Bucharest was nothing special either, just another big city.

Bulgaria has been pretty cool, although maybe a bit touristy (but that's probably just because we've picked the touristy places to go to). The Black Sea coast was nice. We stayed in a nice little guesthouse right in the old town of Sozopol (we could even hear the waves from the window). The beach was really nice, but don't be fooled. The water is not black at all, it's quite clear.

We've decided to skip the capital, Sofia, because it sounds like just another big city. So we've come to Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second city, instead. It's cool because we're now starting to see ancient Roman ruins lying around. This city was called Phillipopolis way back then, and there's a really cool amphitheatre (still in use) and part of a huge stadium (that continues under the pedestrian mall), where no doubt countless gladiators fought each other to the death!!!