Having done some city exploration as a pair, Sandy did more on her own once I left for Sliven, 3 hours away, and the ride start. She took in 2 ballets at roughly $30 each, 10% ? of what it would cost to see the National (Canada). She loved both of them. She also booked a hiking trip, a custom one, not a tour bus. The young hiker took her back to the area that we'd circled and gave her a run/climb for her money :). Apparently he was quite knowledgeable, as these people are, likely spouting random factoids all day long (those are my words). They always come across as knowledgeable and most of what they talk about is fact ... but there's always some interpolation and extrapolation.
Had I finished early enough, the plan was to go back to Sofia the day that I finished. That wasn't going to happen as my finish time was well after 8pm and the gang gathered for a party. Had I been smart, I'd have cleaned and packed the bike in the car right away but no, I ended up doing that in the dark.
11 cyclists starting; 6 finishing, including Lazar, the organizer. 3 Bulgarians DNFd along with two Russians. 3 Bulgarians finished, including Lazar, 1 half Bulgarian (Georgi lives in the US now), one Japanese fellow and me, the half&half myself. The Japanese fellow and I sort-of rode together, well never really, but we started about the same time, got to the Controls at roughly the same time - sometimes me ahead, sometimes him - and sort-of tracked each other throughout. He lives between Tokyo and Kyoto and who knows, we might get together in August !
I left Silven around 3:30, getting to Sofia in time for breakfast, car loading and heading northwestward. Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia - the borders didn't have any significant backups. Slovenia, back in the land of the Euro and we stopped half-way between the Slovenia border and Venice in a lovely little town with a nice hotel and good dinner.
We drank Bulgarian wine in Italy.
Onward to Venice and the car swap. That was necessary due to price. Including the Eastern European leg in the car rental really costs a lot extra. We moved from one Fiat 500 with Europcar to a slightly differently configured Fiat 500 with Hertz. I told the lady at Hertz that we were packed to the roof and couldn't take anything smaller ... she obliged and our only penalty was waiting 15-20 minutes for the only one on the lot to be washed. Onward again, trying to use up as much of the 12 hour drive from Venice to Lleida so that our drive the next day would be easy. We did accomplish that, stopping short of Aix en Provence at another lovely place (they're all lovely when you just need to get out of the car :).
We drank Bulgarian wine in France; finishing that. We bought French wine to drink in Spain :).
Onward ... to our hotel Cal Ball in a little town close to La Fuiola where the ride actually starts; a 6km ride.
We walked around the town, completely closed up due to the time of day, back to our hotel and dinner. It's a B&B, hosted by the owners. It's a gem. It deserves its own blog avec pictures and I'll do that ... sometime.
Dinner - 25th in Bulgaria; 26th in Italy; 27th in Spain and tonight we'll repeat. Boring but there's nowhere else to go !
The bike is together and cleaned up. We're repacking as once we leave here for the day, Sandy won't come back and I'd better be ready to close and load bags and "take off eh" in the morning. Sandy's train from Lleida is around 9pm. We'll eat in town and I'll drop her at the train station early enough to get back to Cal Ball at a reasonable time.
I'd like to say that I'm as ready as I'll ever be but that's not true. I did some route review and prep this a.m. but am hampered due to lack of internet service, or rather skimpy.
One down, three to go.
Onward !
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