Greetings from Veliko Tarnovo - a former capital of Bulgaria until it was captured by the Ottomans. The old part of the city is really charming overlooking the Yantra river valley and surrounded by ravines; valleys & forest. The fortress of Tsarevets is the main attraction. Well, i say that but it may no longer be true - the English appear to have moved-in and not because of the fortress...... The estate agents here advertise properties in English and give ...

Today has been spent exploring the area around Brasov - Brasso in Hungarian & Konstad in German - starting off with a visit to Bran to see the castle associated with Dracula. The castle itself is quite sweet and was the summer home of Queen Maria - one of Queen Victoria's grandchildren. The castle was extensively renovated between 1920 & 1927 but there has been a castle on this site since the early 1200's. In the mid-1400's the castle was rebuilt and g...

Buna ziua from Brasov in Transylvania. Well, i never expected Romania to be so lovely - possibly Europe's best kept secret. Even Bucharest is nicer than i'd been led to believe and the travel agent's assertion that a day in Bucharest was more than enough is wide of the mark. The centre of Bucharest has some interesting squares - not remarkable - but worth seeing nonetheless and despite the destruction during the communist era a lot of old houses and buildings st...

And so back to Yerevan after 7 days of driving around Armenia. What a beautiful country! Best times to come are May/June and September/October. If you come in June you'll see the wild flowers - no matter how hard your heart, however cynical you are - to see fields of red, yellow, pink, purple, blue and white flowers will refresh your spirit - plus all the butterflies and the birds.... Do you know, Yerevan only has about 6 pairs of pigeons - top marks, Yerevan...

Greetings from Goris - this is as far south as we come on this trip to Armenia. I have several days to catch up on so will now continue from where we left - i.e. Lake Sevan. We followed the shore line of Lake Serevan and went first to a church at Hayravank and then on to a fascinating cemetary in Gavar - the fascination being that some of the grave stones date from the 7th century and there are, of course, lots of khachkars to see. After that we drove through t...