On our last day in the beach town of Varna we went to see the Aladzha Monastery. Maggi at the B&B told us what bus to take, the place is 23 km out of town. She told us to make sure to tell the drIver we wanted to go to the Monastery. We did and he dropped us off at a deserted turnout on a 4 lane hiway and pointed. We walked along what felt like the Deerfoot for about 1 km (it felt longer). Finally a sign. We turned left walked another km up hill and there it was, the entrance. After paying 10 lev ($7) We were facing a rock wall 8 or 10 stories tall. There were small horizontal caves along the face of the wall connected by narrow walkways. The caves were on 3 different levels and were not large, they were shallow and short. I had to duck few times. You could see soot on all the ceilings from the fires the monks used for heat and cooking in the 14th century. Those guys lived a tough life. We couldn't figure out what they used for a bathroom, likely just hung over the edge and.....well, you figure it out. They didn't climb down 80 feet to pee.

Coffee. You never have to be without coffee in Varna. There are coffee vending machines all over town. Kitty and I had to walk thru an alley as a shortcut to the beach, there was a working vending machine in that alley.

We are glad we didn't pre-book a bunch of hotels. We only had the place in Varna booked. Plans were to go from Varna to Ruse to see the underground church then go to Veliko Tarnovo, all by bus. I have the bus schedules all printed out from various sites from the internet.

A couple of days ago we went to the bus station in Varna to make arrangements. Guess what? No more bus from Ruse to Veliko. If we had gone to Ruse we would have had to back track to Varna to get to Veliko, likely 5 or 6 hours of riding. Kind of like a Globus tour thru Scandinavia.

Today we caught a 0900 bus to Veliko. It was packed, we couldn't reserve seats together. When we arrived in Veliko we had no idea that we were here. No one was getting luggage so stayed on the bus. A lady got on and her ticket seat number was the same as mine. That was our clue to get our butts off the bus. We almost went to Sofia early.

Veliko looks like a nice town, very hilly very pictureque. Our hotel is very nice but a little further from old town than we thought. However it does have a clothes drier. (For the new comers to the blog, a drier is a balcony)

Kitty has a cold so after arriving we walked a bit . She is resting before dinner. The heat here will sweat the germs out.

Hippies are well and enjoying good times and also the struggles of travel. It's worth it and laugh at the mistakes we could or did make.

Talk later. Hope everyone is well