Plovdiv; Saturday, 12 October, 2024

The rain had finally stopped when I got up to head down to breakfast, and after a quick meal I packed my bag and headed out of the hotel to the Metro station and over to the Central Bus station to catch my connection over to Plovdiv.

The bus journey was pretty smooth, with the coach getting into Plovdiv a good 15 minutes early, which meant that even with the 30 minute walk from the bus station to my hotel it was still barely 13:30 when I arrived, long before the 15:00 check-in time, but thankfully the room I’d been upgraded into (two upgrades in one trip must be a record!), was available so I was able to drop off my luggage and freshen up before heading out into town.

Plovdiv is built around six hills and paved from the material that made up a seventh hill which was literally quarried to ground level for the high quality stone, perfect for making paving cobbles and stones, and then laid back out over the city as the streets. I spent a bit of time wandering around the lower part of the town below the hills before heading over to the Ancient Stadium.

The remains of the end of the stadium – the point at which chariot racers would have executed a potentially lethal turn at the end of a long straight – including the seating were discovered during building works in the middle of the 20th century and today just a small section at this end has been uncovered as the rest of the stadium sits underneath the main shopping street, so excavating all of it might be a bit detrimental to the economics of the city.

I headed down into the ruins to have a look around and to pick up a ticket that gave combined entrance to virtually all the historic attractions of the old town, as well as the 3D film in the stadium that recreated what the site would have looked like at the height of the Roman Times.

From the stadium I headed up the hills into the heart of the old town having a long wander round the sites, taking in several of the historic houses of the old town that have either been converted into specialist museums – such as the Pharmacy Museum or the permanent collection of paintings by local artist Zlatyu Boyadzhiev – or kept as they would have looked when they were lived in by the wealthy elite of the city such as the Balabanov and Hindliyan Houses.

I had a bit more of a wander back through the old town, and through the only surviving gate and section of the city’s old walls before climbing up to the view point located on the top of the hill looking down over the more modern part of Plovdiv, as well as across to three of the other hills of the city, and the strip mall that’s located on the site of the long since flattened seventh hill.

I walked back down the hill to the area close to the ancient stadium to stop for dinner, though I decided to do things a little backwards as the very nice café serving baklava and Turkish tea had tables, so I did desert first before heading round to a restaurant for a main.

After dinner I had a quick wander around the top level of the stadium, which was floodlit and also hosting an event – with the seating and stage being used almost exactly as they would have been done 2000 or more years ago.

I headed back to the hotel the long way, heading up and over the top of the hill with the Ancient Theatre on it to take in the views of that at night, before passing through the old gate and back down the hill to my welcoming hotel bed and a good nights sleep.