UK to Bulgaria - the trip over
Having taken several hours to squash everything into the van we set off for the Eurotunnel on the 23rd October rather later than planned. We missed our original crossing but caught the next train and by eleven that evening found ourselves in a horrid motel in Calais.The next day was pretty miserable and after a few wrong turns we were on our way, driving through France to Belgium, across the bottom tip of Holland and into Germany were we found a lovely, if basic hotel just off the motorway.
Next day it was off through the rest of Germany, into Austria and as the light was fading into Hungary. So far we had not encountered any real problems but we had heard there were riots in Budapest and so chose to press on further through Hungary, stopping later on in the evening at a roadside motel. And we had a fantastic Hungarian Gulash and a well deserved pint of beer.
Our fourth day on the road and we entered Romania, all quite excited to see the countryside and scenery. But it was slow going up a winding road through the hills. Then we hit the main lorry route down to Greece and Turkey and the landscape flattened out into desolate plains and poor run down industrial towns. We saw numerous power stations and it was really quite depressing. However, part way through the country we climbed into the mountains and the scenery was fantastic, with pretty monasteries as below.
But then the journey deteriorated, we hit a huge queue going through one town and lost a couple of hours sat moving no where. After finding a motel for the night we set off early the next morning, all just desperate to be out of Romania and into Bulgaria. But it took two hours of driving through and round and round the centre of Bucharest to find the road to the border, then we were caught up in the confusing process of paying pollution and environmental tax for Romania, the fee to cross the Danube bridge, disinfectant tax and so on.....
Finally on our 5th day we entered Bulgaria at Rousse and made our way to Varna!
I am now living near Stara Zagora and slowly sorting things out.
posted by TheTravelBug @ 1:45 PM
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