Rhodopen

On the way to the Rhodopes we stopped in the oldest city in Europe, which has a very checkered history. Plovdiv is located in the Thracian plain and has an old town that is well worth seeing with well-preserved traces dating back to Roman times.

Let's start with the guided hiking tour in southern Bulgaria… read more

The first real hike in Bulgaria was a short, exciting tour in one of the many valleys here in the Rhodopes. There are a lot of flowers at the moment, and some plant connoisseurs in the group.

Very impressive, apart from the nature, was the monastery church with the miraculous icon (photographs are not… read more

A tour that was quite steep at times on rooty, stony, well-laid out paths along a stream in a fairly wild ravine (so to my liking 😉) led us past several small waterfalls and an already impressive middle one to the 45 m high fall over a rugged one Karst rock face. Somewhat adventurous (and not necessarily… read more

There are countless hills and valleys in the Rhodopes, some real gorges, caves, rocks and other exciting geological formations. The goal of today's hike was a very special highlight, the marble miracle bridges (or wonderful bridges). Very impressive, these huge natural arches! They were not primarily… read more

Today's tour offered us a lot of views in the first and last part. We hiked from Gela, a very widespread village at the foot of the third highest mountain in the Rhodopes, the Orpheusberg. According to legend, the famous Orpheus from Greek mythology came from here. On the way we passed three chapels… read more

Today's tour, starting directly from the hotel for a change, first led up through the forest, which was repeatedly interrupted by clearings, and then over beautiful meadows with the rare and therefore protected Greek mountain tea, many flowers and other orchids (😉 - I'm repeating myself, but I'm really… read more

Today we started again directly at the hotel, about 2 km outside of Trigrad. Pretty soon we were out of the forest and stood on the most beautiful flower meadow so far (hard to believe, but it was still possible to increase it 😉 - there was "only" one new orchid). The view is wonderful again! It continued… read more

The last hike in the Rhodopes led from the village square of Trigrad to the neighboring village of Yagodina and from there to the Buynovo Gorge. On the way we passed beehives that are protected from bears with an electric fence. We didn't see any bears (quite in my sense 😉), but a bear track. The size… read more

A short and slightly faster morning walk through the park right next to the hotel in Sofia. The park with the water features looks very well maintained. I find the Kulturpalast impressive, but not necessarily in a positive sense. There is something violent, almost violent, about the display of power.