Pettite Two a Pret

Hello and Happy Sunday,

I hope you are enjoying a good and warm weekend. It appears everywhere else is hot or warm, but in Ireland is like October Weather.
I was away for a couple of weeks visiting my family, traveling to a few places there; I didn’t cook or write something until last weekend. I will share some pictures of my visit in Bulgaria during July. As it will be quite long article decided to split in two parts.
I couldn’t book a direct flight as they were very expensive at this time of the year, so chose to go through London. I found out last minute that I need to have an international passport when traveling throughout the UK and doesn’t matter that I will be transiting and not staying, but somehow they let me go- lucky one.
In Bulgaria was extremely hot weather, but was lovely to visit my family and meet some of my friends. I don’t go so often to there, once in two or three years and usually for a short visit, but this time, I spend two weeks. It is quite an adventure getting to where my parents live as I landed in a city close to the capital, and they live on the other end of the country on the north-east side-300 km away.
I landed in Plovdiv a pretty historical city, but didn’t have time to go around. My parents met me at the airport, and we traveled to where they live-very small town. I stayed there a few days, not so much to do, just stayed with my parents and my nephew, and below are a few photos of the town. Its name comes from an old historical figure, who played a huge part in forming the Bulgarian country – Chan Tervel.
Very quiet town and is getting more and more unpopulated as people leave for bigger cities or abroad.

This Oak is 400 years old and is located in the town central alley.

Next stop Dobrich,

It was one day trip as I had some administrative things like a new passport and driving license, but thankfully it was very quick. After that I had a lovely family walk in the town park, one of very few maintained well.

Dobrich is the city, I spend my high school years, I lived and studied there. It is quite a bigger town, close to the seaside approximately one to two hours, depending on the place you are going.

Next stop is Shumen.

My brother and his family are living here. I had planned to travel around the city as there are a lot of historical castles and ruins but didn’t have too much time. Instead, I spend time with my nephew, he is such a cutie pie.

The car is hand made by my brother for a kids contest with a “Theme eco driving”. He and my nephew spend 3 weeks (just evenings) to build it from scratch 🙂

We spend the mornings playing at the park and afternoons we stayed inside as it was very hot, a few consecutive days over 35 degrees.

The photo below is from the central park in Shumen and somehow I managed to catch the evening sunlight. The statue is from a famous Bulgarian comic, who was from Shumen- Todor Kolev.

One of the days, we managed to go to the town landmark, a huge monument with horses at the highest point of the town. It can be seen from far away everywhere in the city and when you go into the city.

The official name is Founders of the Bulgarian State Monument, and it was built in 1981 to commemorate the 1300th anniversary of the First Bulgarian Empire.

The monument is built in concrete in a Cubist style, and was designed by Bulgarian sculptors Krum Damyanov and Ivan Slavov. It is reached by a processional concrete stairway from Shumen, or by road. It stands at a height of 450 m above sea level and can be seen from 30 km away.

This are the stair that you can take to reach the monument 1300 steps 🙂

Photos from the city taken from around the monument:

I will finish this part with a photo from a lovely dinner- homemade mussels. I will prepare the recipe in the next few weeks and will share it on the blog.

Thank you for readying and have a lovely week ahead 🙂