We went down for brekkie, expecting the usual fare. Oh no! The waitress delivered two trays, which took up the entire table. On them were 2 plates. One with ham slices, cheese slices, 2 fried eggs and 4 little sausages. The other had 2 savoury pies and 2 sweet pastries. There was a piece of fruit, a bowl of the thickest yoghurt I've ever had and some bread and butter, not forgetting a small pot of honey and one of jam. We were stuffed by the time we'd done. Just as well we had a bottle of water and glass of juice to wash it all down with. Humongous!

Hitting the road, I was amazed to see some pelicans on the lake. Didn't know they were in this part of the world. Bowling along I had a couple of brave little lizards dash across the road in front of me. By recent standards it was quite cool, mid 20s. Our first 'stop' was at the toll booths on the motorway, just before we made our way into Bulgaria. €1.30 each. At the border crossing I was expecting to have to stop and present passports but no, we rode straight through into a country I've never been to before. A country, it has to be said, with more cops on traffic duty, than we've seen the entire trip thus far. Despite nobody adhering to the speed limits, the Bulgarian plod seem to be doing their best to put a stop to that. Dutifully, everyone crawls passed the plod in a layby, only to race away when they were out of sight.We must've seen at least 5 different checkpoints on the journey to Sofia.

To get to Sofia we needed to negotiate some big mountains, with lots of twists and turns. We got stuck behind a group of about 5 cars, headed by a lorry and with a transit type flatbed towing a car trailer, just in front of me. After a while, I could sense that Ginny would soon be getting hot under the collar, so pulled into a layby to let her cool down and the traffic get some way ahead. With a nice clear road ahead, I was able to keep Ginny in her sweet temperature spot. After a while though I caught the same group up again. Not so bad this time, as we were on the way down, so I could freewheel, engine off. Amazingly, these vehicles were so slow, I could keep up with them, under now power whatsoever, just gravity doing its thing. On the way down it was amazing to see massive truck after massive truck crawling up towards us. Grizzly counted 15 in a line at one point. Not to be triffles with on tight hairpins (switchbacks).

Out of the hills we were able to motor along quite nicely to our first Bulgarian fuel stop. The cheapest so far, equating to £1.04 per litre!

The going was good for the rest of the journey, though the heat had returned, so by the time we were arriving in Sofia, it was 37 degrees and I was naturally worried what Ginny would make of it. I was doing my now usual trick of switching her off at traffic lights, which seemed to be working. The worse bit of the ride was to come though, as we were confronted with a road of cobbles. That would have been bad enough but there were so many bumps and dips in it, it was impossible to go more than about 25mph. The whole bike was rattling and shaking. Grizzly, who as you may know, hates bumps dropped way back, so we were separated for the last few kilometres. I arrived at the hotel and was already checking us in, when he turned up. We had booked a parking space, which necessitated us backing the bikes up about 30 metres, to get to the road where the entrance was. Hazards on, it was easier than I'd imagined.

The Hotel Anel is pretty posh, part hotel, part art exhibition really. Everywhere there's statues or paintings. A tad over the top I thought. A bit like our room. In fact a superior suite, with two separate rooms, living and bedroom, and a big bathroom with a jacuzzi bath! A bit 80s but still.

We ate in the hotel. Grizzly had a pork stew of some description and I had a Thracian Cheese. You can google it. It was very nice. We had a beer but they were small and pricey, so we went looking for a bar. One was just closing but we found another tiny place. We had a couple more beers there, bigger and better value. Is that 34 now? There was a young American woman I struck up a conversation with. Her and her friend had hired a car and were touring Bulgaria. She was from California but given what is happening in the news, wasn't looking forward to going back. Who could blame her, with that clown in charge?

Piccies.