Hello everyone

Hope you are all stuffed with turkey and Quality Street and had a great Christmas ?

Well we are loving our house sit in Bulgaria, despite in now being Day 9 with no running water and having a daily hike down to the local tap and carrying buckets back up ! The scenery is stunning, and we've been on lots of walks with the dogs. We found an amazing frozen waterfall recently. James cut down our own Christmas tree and we have some lights on it and today we finally had some post so many thanks to those who kindly sent us cards, euros and toaster pockets (now James can finally have a cheese toastie !) Sadly my sisters parcel has yet to arrive so we had Christmas dinner but no bread sauce and no pork scratchings yet for James but I am sure the parcel will arrive soon !

We went into the nearest town to get each other some crazy Christmas presents - I did very well with a new scarf, Santa hat and bubble bath (ah, if only I could run a bath !) and James had his usual tat from me, a hideous 'Bulgarin styleee' Christmas jumper, a pink lego car to build and some Denim deodrant (they love the Denim brand here, circa 1970's !) We also managed to find a hotel with a sauna and shower so we could scrub up !

It was lovely to Skype and Facetime our family and friends on Christmas Day and even better that our friend Denise arrived on Boxing Day to stay for a few days. She flew to Sofia and took a bus halfway to us, to Plodvic - which has 3 bus stations and of course, after much driving around Plodvic we finally found her at the 3rd station in the dark ! It was a crazy drive back through the mountains and ski resort where the fog was so bad we had to crawl along with both James and Denise looking out of a side window to ensure I didn't drive off the road ! Naturally, she came bearing fabuous gifts of champagne, farmhouse cheddar for James, millionaires shortbread for me and some much needed gravy granules !

Happy New Year to you all

xxxx