Continental style breakfast was just what we needed at the hotel ,theres a nice bar area with a self service beer tap unusual for breakfast !but We were driving no beer for our breakfast , the receptionist was lovely and I pulled out my wad of notes to pay the 600 dinar tourist tax , we had a big drive ahead of us ,so we got going at 10am with 1640 miles on the clock , we got a ticket for the toll road and it was all good motorway and lovely sunshine for two hours , when we got to the toll exit the woman at the window said €6 I pulled out my wad of Serb cash -7notes of various sizes of notes a100 a 50 4 20's and two 10's I required 730 so after a quick count ! I used my card to pay the €6 toll , it was still all nice motorway until we got to 1780 mile , abruptly the motorway stopped and we were on proper back roads that were almost alpine in appearance with lots of tunnels weaving through the mountains ,Then at 1840miles we crossed the border from Serbia back into the EU Bulgaria ,no problems at either sides passport controls ,But we required petrol and a toilet you have to buy a vignette to drive in Bulgaria ( it's like road tax you display ) I read you can buy a vignette at the borders petrol stations so I pulled into the first , the solo attendant was approaching our petrol point as I got out the car he asked if I wanted benzene ( petrol ) I said yes I hadn't opened the petrol cap door yet , so I opened that and he took the cap of and he started pouring in the petrol, cammy spoke to me about the toilet we had no Bulgarian money and I asked the attendant if we can buy a vignette on a credit card showing him the card , he pointed at his wee notice that I had'nt seen declaring no cards cash only I told him to stop pouring in petrol ! Which he done but by this short space of time he had already put in 22.2 Ltrs !! I only had €20 euros stashed , they love euros he just wasn't for believing me I only had €20 and I was beginning to think the only English he knew was pay in euros , he got out his old calculator punched in some numbers and said I owed him €37 , after a fair bit of two and throw the swindler got my €20 in notes plus €6 in change (I rummaged in my change bag for some coins )and he took the last of my Serb cash to pay for the petrol only and we still had no vignette , I was a tad upset at my first impressions of Bulgaria for this trip ! There was a further two petrol stations within half a mile of the border the first wouldn't sell us a vignette on a credit card ,but the third one was no problem a nice modern looking shell garage , so we bought a toasted sandwich and coffee along with the vignette there on the credit card, the road didn't improve much either and we passed two people who had just been stopped by traffic police ! it must be a wee money spinner ripping of travellers at this border
It has been 6years since me and cammy were last in Bulgaria together, it seemed like a lot longer , we had a great ski holiday here in 2009 at bororvets and that's now tainted by the fact I got my walkie talkies stolen by baggage handlers on the way home , the road into Sofia was an old one and didn't show the city of at its best , we drove straight through the capital and onto the road we must have been on the last time here from the airport to bororvets ski resort ,all those years ago , I had a slight memory off the mountain tunnels , we had my chemical romance playing after the strokes the Beatles and the proclaimers had been on also today with our usual daily Johnny cash hit ! So I suppose it would be inevitable , cammy put on some hard core boy racer music boom boom boom raise the roof boom boom boom! ! I think it was a plan so as he could take over the driving and I could take over the CD player , and after a short while this worked , we switched seats and I put on the view again ,
Somewhere close to valenka Tărnovo we done 2000mile on the trip meter we didn't notice until 40mile later when we were sitting at the town centre trying to phone my brothers friend Ian to find out how to get to Bryan's house , we had arrived nearly two hours earlier than we expected but that was because the sat nav changed the time for Bulgaria and our clocks watches and phones were all behind ! So it was a pleasant surprise when cammy shouted we are here ! 7days 9countries 2040miles not including sea miles and we had arrived at our destination , now all we had to do was find Ian and get to Bryan's house wherever it was , we eventually got through to Ian on his phone and made arrangements to meet him on a road outside of the town ,he would be waiting in a Chrysler me and cammy drove past a Honda ( it was Ian's son bret and his girl ) Ian phoned us to say we had drove right past the meeting place , so we turned around and went back this time to be met by Ian and his wife in their Chrysler , we followed them to a nice restaurant by the river called the old monastery and had dinner with Ian his friends their girlfriends and family , after dinner cammy followed Ian's car ( I had beers with dinner ) and parked the silver bullet at its destination the wee car had made it to Bryan's house and done it in style we had really enjoyed our drive across Europe with the coupe but it was time to park her up for the night and get dropped in town by Ian's wife at the pizza bar ,
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