Bulgaria with Patrick

I am one of four 60-somethings who meet every few years to vacation together. Our goal has been to find destinations that are off the beaten path, before they are “discovered” and, hence, spoiled. A 12-day visit to Bulgaria certainly satisfied our criteria.

We decided to look for a private guide/driver to lessen the stress of finding our way around a country where the signs are predominantly in Cyrillic, although we were concerned that a guide would not understand what we wanted to experience. Not to worry! On the Internet, we found Patrick, owner of Bulgaria Private Guide.

We contacted him about a year in advance to customize a tour. For four people, our total cost for 12 days, Oct. 6-17, 2011, was €2,494 (currently near $3,102). This included everything except transport from/to the airport, our apartment in Sofia, site entrance fees and most meals (two dinners were included), though Patrick always found us unique and inexpensive places to eat.

He provided the vehicle and the fuel; it was a little cramped for five, but I understand he now has an SUV. A personable individual, Patrick drove us safely, handled with aplomb the invariable glitches that arose and was a font of knowledge about all aspects of his country.

Bulgaria proved a fascinating mix of small villages and ancient culture.

We had a homestay with home-cooked (and -grown) food in Oreshak. We stayed in a 300-year-old home in the quaint and lovely village of Jeravna, where, if you get up early enough, you can watch the goats and sheep being taken out to pasture and jostle with the cows coming into the main square for a morning drink.

In larger towns like Veliko Tarnovo and Plovdiv, we bypassed the large tourist hotels for small, charming inns that Patrick was able to find.

We had a personal concert of traditional songs from the “Singing Grandmothers of Dobarsko” plus a horse-and-cart ride through the village, with a stop at a still where rakia, the Bulgarian firewater, was being brewed.

Walking into a Thracian tomb dating back to 300 BC was unforgettable. Looking at the stunning icons in the Rila Monastery and tracing the chariot tracks on the old Roman roads of Nicopolis set our imaginations racing.

The capital, Sofia, in the western part of the country, is the easiest access point for arrival and departure but doesn’t merit spending much time there, I felt. Similarly, the Black Sea coast, to the east, seems overdeveloped by Western Europeans looking for an inexpensive summer beach vacation.

The treasure that is Bulgaria is in the center of the country, and Patrick helped us discover it.

LINDA SMITH
Brookline, MA