Yet more trip!

After Pomorie, we travelled on to Nessebur, which was once known as Mesembria. It's an ancient town which pre-dates Roman occupation of the region and was also part of the Bulgarian and Byzantine Kindoms in the Middle Ages. It was in a highly strategic area of the Black Sea coast, on a peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. A large section of the city wall is still standing today and it shows how well-defended the city was in ancient times. The entire town is a World Heritage site, in fact.









It's a town of many medieval churches and Ottoman era wooden houses. It would be even prettier if they'd banish the junk shops selling plastic souvenirs from China! I couldn't take photos in the archaeological museum, but it was lovely and had the most gorgeous pair of necklaces I've ever seen, which were part of a recent find. Not too surprisingly, the finders tried to conceal the hoard, but the police caught them.



We had an extremely Bulgarian lunch of grilled pork and veggies (eggplant, onions, peppers, tomatoes, and courgettes.) Yum!



Next post - Varna and the Preslav Treasure!

More about the trip

We ate well on this drive. From roadside fruit vendors




to small, village mehanas, the food was well prepared and presented and seasonally fresh. Boy, I love a sun-warmed, ripe, juicy nectarine!



This was the first of many churches and monasteries we visited. It's between Pomorie and Nessebar.





In keeping with tradition, we managed to travel during the Feast of the Assumption, so we saw lots of church-goers and services.

The doorbell rang...

And who should be there but our family friend, Plamen! "I'm just back from the village," says he, "and we have a lot of tomatoes this year. These are for you and have a good day." And off he goes, leaving me holding the bag, which was full of these!




Looks like more than tomatoes to me!!

On the road again

I just got back from the second annual Balkan Roadtrip. Last year, a colleague and I travelled through northern Greece for a long weekend. We added two days to the schedule this year and did a 1700 km loop through Bulgaria: Blagoevgrad-Pazardzhikh-Stara Zagora-Burgas-Pomorie-Nessebar-Golden Sands-Varna-Balchik-Shumen-Veiliki Preslav-Sofia-Blagoevgrad. I think we saw every museum on the way and I know we saw every medieval church in Nessebar!

The trip got off to an excellent start when we saw storks in a nest, which is a good luck sign.



I wonder what seeing flocks of hundreds of them means? We saw exactly that on the mudflats between Pomorie and Nessebar. No photos, though, because you could not pull off the road anywhere.

We spent a night in Pomorie and this was the view from our hotel balcony:




In the morning, we walked down the beach to the salt museum, which has recently been restored with EU funding. In the pictures it doesn't look like much, but the Roman walls and system of turning seawater into pure white table salt has been restored and is once again producing large quantities of salt. That white mound is taller than a large man!

Birthday thoughts

This year was a milestone birthday for me. Yep. I'm 50! I celebrated in England (twice!), in the US, and in Bulgaria with family and with good friends. I received birthday wishes and cards from too many folks to count, had wonderful parties, and got some amazing presents. One of the most note-worthy was a small cardboard box. It was filled with a stitcher's dream gift - antique threads, trims and needles. What made it most special though, was that it was a selection from an inheritance from the giver's great aunt. To share something like that is truly amazing. Many thanks to Edith!!

Promised photos

Here are some photos from my holiday shopping. First, the bargain find: reels of silk originally from the Handweaver's Studio, now sourced from a charity shop. Not shown are the two giant reels that stayed at Constanza's flat. Each was easily as large as all of these combined!



Next, the wool batting for Lord Guy's gambeson (someday!!)



And now my current embroidery WIP - The Patience Sampler from Just Nan. I have had it around for 11 years (!) and I figured it was time to get it out and make it. It is 100% silk on linen with many, many embellishments. It was originally issued in four parts and the photo of the linen with a tiny bit of embroidery and the first pattern section gives you an idea of its final size.

Yes, I am still alive!

I've been nagged by friends and family to get posting again. They KNOW I've been travelling for three weeks, but they still want a blog, even though I haven't been near a needle for the whole vacation (except in a tattoo parlor, but that's another story...). Oh well!

What I can say is that in the course of my travels, I found half a dozen reels of lovely natural colored silk thread (originally from the Handweaver's Studio) in a London charity shop for a ridiculously small amount of cash. My goal is to dye it up over the next month using natural dyestuffs and then embroider some garments with the results. Other travel shopping was also quite successful. I now have six nice rabbit furs to use for tippets or hood trim or whatever. Visiting historic forts is a good way to score stuff like this in the US - gift shops have unusual stuff. I also found some nice 100% wool batting to use in a quilted gambeson for Lord Guy. Hopefully that will be done for his next birthday. When I get some batteries in my camera, I'll put some pictures up of the latest purchases.