We stayed in Plovdiv for 5 nights, one of our longest stops in a single place during our trip through Europe, we wanted to have a lot of time here as when we researched he city there seemed to be a lot of historical sites that really appealed to us. It was also nice to know when we booked it, that we would have a break from all the travelling for a while after venturing to soo many different places in Serbia, we wanted to break in ourselves easily in other words.
It was a long trip arriving to Plovdiv from Nis, plus a short cab ride to the apartment, so once we had received the keys and had a quick sit down in our apartment (travelling is exhausting) is was about 7pm we decided to go out for dinner and have an early night. This in turn led to going out for some drinks before dinner, arriving at a restaurant 2-3 hours later, I had something like meatballs and Katie had pickled pork ribs, they sound horrible but was actually pretty amazing. we had that with a bottle of wine and got home close to midnight. Great first night!
Now it was time to explore! our second day we packed our backpacks with our coats and bottles of water, as even though we had such good luck with the weather in Serbia we were still expecting it to turn on us. Our apartment was a stones throw away from the most central part of Plovdiv, no more than 5 minutes I would say. Now we knew there was a lot we wanted to see in Plovdiv, but for some reason when we tried to plan our excursion for the day this morning we struggled with working out a route and the sites we wanted to see, most probably because we didn’t have the early night we had planned. we found a few sites noted down the address’ and went off.
Our first stop was the Gardens of Tsar Simeon, a large park in the centre of Plovdiv. It took us about 30-45 min to walk through, it was a very slow paced walk as there was a lot to look at, and was full of couples holding hands all doing the same as us. One thing I haven’t mentioned yet about our trip which is the only day to day downside that we have found, and maybe we are only experiencing this because we are in major cites but even myself working in London every day before I left never experienced it as much as we have so far, and that is that people just do not want to share the path. Theres no stopping to let someone past its just I’m going to walk at you till you move, a few times me and Katie have gone into single file, expecting a couple approaching us to do the same so that we can share a narrow path, but they wont they will walk you into the road and take it all for themselves. It has gotten to the point now I find myself not walking in the road and playing human bumper cars as I walk around town, the weird thing is the other people always look completely shocked when you have collided with them. Maybe I’ll have to find a local and get them to explain the laws of pedestrian walking, if there are any.
The Gardens of Simion Tsar are also home to the singing fountains, unfortunately I have no pictures of them, although the ones I found online do definately make it a sight you should try to see. We only passed them on this one day though and they only run at 9pm at night every night, and during the day it is just a large concrete pool with pipes running round it and lights that arent turned on, not its full potential. This would probably be the only regret of Plovdiv, should of definately remembered to go back.
Next stop The Alesha Monument: The Lone Soviet Soldier.
If you want to get the best views of Plovdiv (below) this is the place to see them, its a long steep walk up a hill to where the statue of The Lone Soviet Soldier is situated. It was built as a memorial for all the soviet soldiers that died in world war II and is constantly being petitioned by certain locals to be taken down, fortunately it is still here. Although they have had to introduce a permanent guard there who stays day and night to stop anyone from vandelising it, this really does make sense because alot really beautiful buildings you will see are covered in graffiti really letting down the overall look. What you do notice from this height though is the mountain ranges that surround the city, something you just don’t see coming from london/essex.
Had a really great first full day, once again carrying around our coats for no reason at all it was extremely hot, not that either of us was complaining! We went back to the centre of Plovdiv to this big square we had walked past earlier to sit down for a coffee, unfortunately everyone seemed to have the same idea as us, we did find a seat on a table outside though. We asked for a menu, the waitress brought it over, turns out we was at the outside seating for a cocktail bar, they did sell coffee but we went with their version of a long island iced tea, a few of them later and we was out for the night once again! Plovdiv has alot of great pubs and bars and I would recommend to anyone to make time of an evening to experience as many of them as you can.
