The town itself is in a stunning location on top of a steep hill and squeezed in by a snaking river to the north and another to the south. From here you can see the rolling hills and valleys out into the distance covered with forests and grassy plains. These give countless hiking and biking trails if you have more than a couple of days to spend here as well as a bit of caving and rock-climbing if you know where to look.
It is hard to start anywhere but with the imposing Tsarevets Fortress which sits spectacularly inside it's rebuilt three-sided wall at the town's highest point. Built in the fifth century and modified pretty much ever since, the fortress features a long entrance with several gates, a couple of watch towers, an old palace, numerous ruined houses, the slightly sinister "Execution Rock" (complete with steep drop) and crowned in the middle by a rather modern church on the peak.
Elsewhere, the place has the same feel as Plovdiv where it is just nice to stroll down the old topsy-turvey streets and look out over the town. It is the kind of place where you can still find a blacksmith or cobbler if you wanted to. Across the river, and right next to the art museum, is the Asenevs Monument. The big pointy sword in the middle is a tribute to the four Bulgarian kings who can be found circling it on horseback.
I had heard a lot about Sofia from local Bulgarians and fellow travellers and the response was nearly always a shrug of the shoulders followed by "it's alright I guess". As a result, I decided to bypass the capital and drove on to the Rila Monastry instead. The monastry sits in between the Rila Mountains and the village of Rila (can you see how it got it's name?) and I turned up at my first Bulgarian campsite, Bor Camping, just up the road.
The campsite is run by a friendly but decrepid old man whose back has been formed into a 90-degree bend by the chair he sits in most of the day. As a result, he then has to bend his neck right back to see when he's walking and he looks a bit like a moving flight of stairs.
As for the campsite, it lives up to everything I had heard about camping in Bulgaria. The toilet is literally a hole in the floor, the shower is literally a hole is the floor with one freezing cold water pipe coming out at waist level which you have to crouch under (probably not helping the old guy's back either) to get clean, while the power outlet is a soggy broken cable in the middle of the field. I decided that I didn't need electricity that much after all.
As for the monastry, probably the feather in Bulgaria's battered old tramp hat, it is definitely worth the trip. The thick stone walls look more like a castle or prison on approach but once you get inside it is a huge infusion of colour and brightly painted murals.
The monastry was a refuge for traditional Bulgarian religion, culture and language during the country's occupation by the Ottoman empire and it has become a sort of Mecca within Bulgaria. Around the outside are three levels of living quarters with a museum in one corner but the little church in the centre is the main attraction with it's zebra-striped archways plastered with murals on the inside. When you enter the church it is wonderfully painted although it still feels a little dark and gloomy and looks best from the outside with the mountains providing the backdrop.
In the courtyard and next to the church there is a big stone tower but, as if it was too grey, they have still found reason to build a colourful extention on the front. That, in a nutshell, is why I have loved Bulgaria.
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