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  • Day 573

    Day 574: Rila Monastery

    September 11, 2018 in Bulgaria ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    Left early and headed further south out of Sofia, heading for probably Bulgaria's most famous tourist attraction: Rila Monastery. This was a monastery dating back to around the 9th century, when a monk named Ivan Rilski became a hermit and lived in a nearby cave. He attracted followers who built a monastery nearby after his death, and it's been an active monastery ever since.

    It's remarkable that the monastery has survived both Bulgarian empires, 500 years of Muslim Ottoman rule, two World Wars, and 50 years of atheist communism.

    It's got a really unusual look, as the monastery has quite high walls with monk cells built into them, and they're arranged in arched arcades with painted black and white stripes, creating a really striking look. Very Spanish or Italian I think. The church in the centre is beautiful, covered in frescoes though as an active monastery church I couldn't film inside.

    Most of the buildings are actually fairly new, since there was a fire in the 17th century and the only thing from earlier is a large defensive tower. We paid an extortionate 5 euros each to climb the tower, finding out once inside that the chapel with original frescoes at the top is by prior appointment only, and you couldn't really see outside or access the roof! Disappointed in that, but the monastery was free to visit so not the end of the world.

    Had lunch at a nearby restaurant - quite touristy as there were still lots of pensioner buses around. Food was good though, Shandos had a whole trout while I had grilled pork with mushroom & onion sauce.

    Back in the car where we drove down out of the mountains, about 2 hours across the plains and then back into the mountains to Bansko, where tomorrow's WHS is located. This is a modern ski town but since it's late summer there's of course no snow, and almost everything is closed. We're staying in a serviced apartment type thing - I reckon of the couple hundred apartments here, maybe five are occupied at the moment.

    Even the town supermarket was closed, though there was a convenience store which conveniently sold beers along with spaghetti and pesto.
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