Monday 26 August – River Cruise (Vidin, Bulgaria)

We arrived in Vidin, Bulgaria around 2am. There wasn’t much noise so we didn’t really know until we woke up and looked out the windows.

There were two choices of excursions today: Bulgarian Homemade Banitsa and Kindergarten visit or Bulgarian Red Rock Country visit. We chose the Red Rock Country Visit.

The destination was about an hour away, so quite a long distance in a bus. We drove to Belogradchik and had some water and something to eat at a local restaurant, before setting off up the road a few more minutes. They had said that the walk up to the top would be arduous.

After arriving and getting a history of the fortress, we set off up the hill and rocks to get to the top. Along the way there were a couple of spots off to the side to get views across the countryside and town. This was also a good opportunity to have a bit of a rest before continuing as it was quite hot.

We made it up to the top and the views were absolutely stunning. The rock formations are over 200 million years old. The outcroppings formed a natural defence for the town that was enhanced with man-made fortifications over the centuries.

We got a few pictures up the top. There were a few places where they had a fence put up to stop people walking too far out, other bits they didn’t. Complete contrast to Australia. In Australia they would have signs everywhere saying don’t go near the edge, and most likely somebody there to tell you as well. There were no signs and no people telling you not to go too close to the edge. Use your common sense and you are fine. No incidents on the day.

The walk back down was quite nice, but it was heating up quickly – up to about 34 degrees by the time we got back to the bus. After an hour long bus ride back to the ship, we were hot and in need of a rest. Rather than go up to lunch, we decided to just cool off and have lunch in the room.

We ordered some ham and cheese baguettes with chips, chocolate cake, cookies. One of the two butlers on board the boat delivered our food to us, which was a nice touch. The only issue – they appeared to have left off the ham from the ham and cheese portion. Oops. The chocolate cake was beautiful though.

We continued to rest, and watch a movie, before heading up for dinner. After dinner they were having a competition – dance and quiz. The quiz was to pick which of the 10 or so songs would have the most people up dancing. We had to pick team names and the top 3 songs. Our team names were “Nealy Wheelies”, “Mick Mick’s” and “Little Jimmy’s”. We got 2 out of 3, but got bamboozled on the 3rd. It didn’t help that we couldn’t even remember which songs we had chosen, so probably not up dancing at the right time! It was another long day so off to bed!