Since moving to Switzerland, I’ve usually spent a week or so at home in Denmark during the summer – visiting family and friends, enjoying the seaside, and eating lots of sild. My girlfriend, originating from Bulgaria, is more or less used to the same thing, just in, well, Bulgaria. Wanting to spend the holidays together, we thus opted for doing a small tour of Europe: 15 days, about 4000km by plane, 2000km by car, 250km by train (and maybe 15km by bike) and 7 different places to sleep, in first Denmark, and then Bulgaria…
We started out enjoying some time in a summerhouse with my family near Ebeltoft, generally just relaxing, and enjoying the salty sea-water that Switzerland still hasn’t caught on to. During the last days we managed to go sightsee a bit in Aarhus, and then visit friends in Odense, before heading off to Bulgaria.
There we started with a crash-course in navigating very wet Bulgarian roads in the dark, before arriving in the Rila mountains, where we spent the first two days. Those were used to visit the very beautiful Rila Monastery, the fascinating Stob Pyramids, and 5 of the 7 breathtaking Rila Lakes. Afterwards we went on to Stara Zagora, for sightseeing, family visits, and a trip to the Shipka Memorial (and the Memorial Church), learning about the history of Bulgaria in the process. The last couple of days were spent relaxing at the beach at the seaside.
All in all, we had a fantastic time – with lots of amazing people, great weather (mostly), beautiful sunsets, views and places, quite a bit of very good food, and some photography also. The only problem was that, as always with holidays, you could always use a feeeeew days more ;)
