That’s me back from a nice week in Bulgaria with Maria and her parents. Was a bit on the warm side though and I now resemble the lobster man from Mars…
Got up to quite a lot of different things. The first thing all four of us done was to visit a famous cave called Ledenika which is 300m long and has many different caverns, especially the “concert hall” cavern which is very impressive with hundreds of giant stalactites and stalagmites.
Some of the gaps that you had to fit through were only a couple of feet wide or high. Don’t think many of the punters I saw at Livi shopping centre a couple of weeks ago would have made it!
It was only about 7 degrees in the cave so after an hour we needed to get warmed up. We came down the mountain to the town of Vratsa which was a very beautiful town with views up to the mountains and excellent ice creams 
It also had a statue of Hristo Botev, who Maria’s home town is named after.
Next was to the beautiful Cherepish monastery which was built in the 1300’s next to a very nice river and chalk mountains.
After a busy day, the best way to relax was by meeting up with Maria’s uncle and family for a massive BBQ with plenty of salads and the odd glass of Rakia…
