Day 7 Bulgaria Melnik

We were out of the room at 6am. We watched the monastery fall into darkness last night, and wanted to watch darkness fade to light this morning. We saw the clockwinder climb the steps and wind the mechanism that drives the clock to strike every hour. Left the monastery shortly after, for Bankso, a UNESCO Heritage listed ski resort. The town was full of people. After the monastery,  we found a busy town just too much.  Also, we could not figure out the parking system so we quickly decided to get out of town and do a hike. We found a hike for a waterfall. It turned out to be the smallest shortest hike and in keeping with the theme we built a baby snowman with our bare ungloved hands.
Having skipped breakfast and a very light dinner the night before, we were starving by about 11am  and had to look for food. We found a cafe called Food Market at the outskirts of town and thought that we could navigate the parking there. Alas, it was just as complicated with an sms ticket system that threatened clamping or towing.  We have an ESim that only has data, so we have no means of doing an sms. We went into Food Market and a lovely young waiter/chef told us that we could park in their reserved area without having to worry about a ticket. Ruby had to ask him for a fork to eat her sausages with. He then asked her to repeat the word fork. We fear that he may mispronounce and get into trouble later.

From snow to thermal bath.  Our next stop was free outdoor thermal bath at Rupite, just 1½hours away. It was shallow muddy ponds in the ground that were steaming at approximately 38-40⁰C.  We chose a hole that was least occupied.  We were entertained by an elderly gentleman trying to coax his wife in. He proceeded to teach us to cover our whole bodies with mud for therapeutic purposes. His wife finally dipped her toes for she feared an allergic reaction. It is amazing the conversation and communication and information people can have with sign languages and gestures. We watched him fill up 1 litre plastic bottles with water from the pond and wondered what he was going to do with it. When we got out, he beckoned us to him and proceeded to pour the bottles of water over us to rinse the mud and sand off our bodies. What a lovely couple who only had about 3 teeth between them. 

On the way to Melnik, where we will spend two nights, we saw 2 pink pigs grazing and had to stop to take a photo of them.  Melnik is a sweet, little stone town with no parking complications. We might really like it here.

Dinner was at the restaurant of our guest house.  There were diners smoking in the front room of the restaurant,  but no smoking in the room inside.  We still got whiffs of cigarette smoke, but it was bearable.  The lovely young man who helped us carry our bag to the room on the second floor was also the waiter. He comes from Sandanski, a town about ½hour away and travels with "the cooker" , the restaurant's chef.

Aside: Grace asked our host from Sofia about parking in Bulgaria and she sent us instructions for the SMS app. It is an app called SMS, not that we have to send an SMS text. However,  we cannot download the app as  Play store says that itis not available in our region. The parking saga continues...Read more