How Israelis kept Kosher in Borovets, Bulgaria, and Saw Synagogues

Flag of Bulgaria.

Keeping Kosher in Bulgaria

In Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, we met Jews from Florida, USA, who were on their way to a a Chabad meal. Chabad who offer kosher food and are outreach, welcoming the irreligious as well as the Orthodox. Chabad offer food around the world, especially in capital cities.

Israelis were eating a picnic in the lobby of the Winter Palace hotel in Borovets, Bulgaria. We met them in the street nearby and said Shalom and after half an hour of chatting, walking to and fro, they invited us to share their food and wine in the hotel lobby. How did they get permission for that? 'Chutzpah!'

Their tour included the synagogue in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, and another in Plovdiv.

We saw the synagogue in Sofia and took a free Jewish walking tour of Sofia.

Useful Websites
http://bulgariatravel.org/en
ryanair.com

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Take Bulgaria's Borovets Gondola up the mountain to the peak for walking and 'Forest Bathing'

Where Is Borovets in Bulgaria?

Borovets is a winter ski and summer walking centre south of Bulgaria's capital, Sophia. Borovets is Bulgarian for pine trees. 

Where Are The Gondolas?

The bright orange gondolas, each seating four people, go from the base station in the centre of tiny Borovets. The gondola base station is opposite the huge Samokova triangular hotel which backs onto the equally huge Rila hotel.

Gondola at Borovets, Bulgaria. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright. 

Be Prepared - Shopping for Sticks & Hats

In the shops up and down the two main streets beside the hotels and behind them, you can buy the basic items you are likely to need if you don't already have everything. Choose a rucksack to carry your water bottle, a pair of expanding walking sticks, or a hat, all at prices from about 10 leva, which is about 7 Euros - check the exchange rate. I bought a cheaper baseball hat for 6 lev in a supermarket down in Samokova, a small town a couple of miles away. But for 10 lev you can buy a hat with a neck flap which is removable.

Walking sticks, adjustable height. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Gondola Plans

The gondola costs 15 lev for the return journey. Ignore the half way point used by skiers if you are walking because walkers go to the trails at the top to the highest point, or along a lower trail which skirts the peak like the hrizontal crack you make in the top of a boiled egg.

Gondola Seats

Sit facing the mountain if you don't like heights. It is a pity the windows are so scratched which spoils your photos and videos. The journey is really long, about 30 minutes. On the way up I was nervous.  On the way back I was busy taking photos and absolutely loved it. I remembered the Japanese invention of the phrase Forest Bathing, letting the peace of the forest reduce stress.

There is a toilet at the top of the gondola exit. Maps show you the trails and give safety advice. the cafe above the gondola exit looks down over the gondolas coming up. The prices are reasonabe if you are looking for something inexpensive. Try chicken soup at 3.50.

The lower track which I took attracted a lot of young Bulgarian families with children and even toddlers. I would recommend taking sticks because a lot of the wide path is over uneven gravel and bit of rock.

The hut on the lower level is only one hour away, but that is one and a half hours at my speed. I stopped three times for water and moved my water from the rucksack to a large front pocket in my denim trousers. After an hour I could not see the end and turned back. I had referred back to the photo I had taken at the gondola exit I would have known that I was two thirds of the way towards my destination. The others intrepidly went off to the top, a six hour hike.

I saw one couple, a man carrying a rucksack, the girl with nothing to carry. I thought, I would have made faster progress like that.

Angela with a Brolly (British for Umbrella) as a Sunshade in Bulgaria. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Brolly At Borovets

I got out my umbrella to shelter behind if I saw a good spot for a toilet. I decided that keeping my umbrella open like the Singaporeans who use umbrellas as sunshades, was a good idea. I felt a lot better, shielded from the sun and without the extra weight of the umbrella in my rucksack.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. 

Best deals in Borovets? Bulgaria's Rila Hotel with dinner and breakfast

Rila hotel is in Borovets which is best known as a ski resort, but you can get a bargain summer week there. We took RyanAir to Sofia, and the bus from the South bus station to Borovets. In June at the Rila hotel we were paying all in about 80 Euros including dinner and breakfast for a double room occupied by two but that was a group of 24, negotiated by our walking group leader who had visited the area to suss it out the year before.

Looking at Tripadvisor for today, you can get other hotels in Borovets at under 100 euros for bed and breakfast but they sell out fast. Hotel Rila was full with a conference until last Saturday - according to those of our group who arrived a day early, but empty on Sunday and another four days we were there.

Rila hotel is vast and we paid extra to be upgraded to a wonderful room, 855 with a fine view of the green slope, a ski slope in winter, but we were there in summer for walking. The upgrade was 10 leva a day. (The previous room was 858, next door to the services room and beyond that an exit.)

What did I like most about the hotel? Food: The scrambled eggs on the breakfast buffet, the slices of grapefuit and orange. Cinnamon pasty at breakfast. Honey at breakfast. Hot cocoa from the serve yourself coffee machien in the dining room.

Prosecco was served by the glass in the downstairs bar, but not in the restaurant.

Bedrooms? The colourful carpet with red and orange strip patterns highlighting the grey. In the bathroom I like the extra shower attachment by the toilet.

Make sure to try the hot Jacuzzi, maybe the cool indoor swimming pool first because I tried the jacuzzi first and the pool was too cold for me, but if you are short of time, be sure to lie on one of the two heated porcelain loungers in the relaxation area. In summer the spa is open 9-8 pm. it is free to guests but if you are at another hotel you can use it for a guest fee.

If you want to opt for one of the paid extras, various massages are offered including Bulgarian rose, or chocolate - chocolate massage for children, too! The hotel also has a nail bar.

I asked the spa manager what distinguished the hotel where he worked from its neighbours. He said that Rila hotel had been recently renovated. One of the guests told me he had stayed at another local hotel and switched to the Rila because it was so clean.

Aound the corner from Rila hotel in the same huge pyramid shape is another modern hotel, the Samokova, named after the nearby town. With a pool and so on.

Other nice hotels in the area are quite different. The Festa Winter Palace, for example, is smaller and older with a small lobby and a domed ceiling in the dining room like a small chapel. The hotel has an indoor pool.

We made friends with an Israeli group who were staying at the Festa Winter Palace, eating a DIY kosher picnic with kosher wine on a hotel public table, in the lobby, undisturbed by the staff.  I asked the group, "How did you manage that?" A buxom lady grinned, "Chutzpah!" (A Yiddish word which translates as astonishing boldness or brazen cheek.) Their tour group leader was Bulgarian.

In one of the shops on the short walk down to the Gondola, I saw and bought
expanding walking sticks with rounded or t shape handles which were 10 leva, about 7 Euros (June 2019 exchange rate). Neither shop could manage a receipt.

The gondola up to the mountain top and back cost 15 leva per person.


Useful Websites For Travellers
ryanair.com
Hotel Rila
www.rilaborovets.com
Festa Winter Palace ski and spa
www.festahotels.com

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, author and speaker, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and foreign languages to businesses and colleges.

Rila Monastery Must See - top sight in Bulgaria

Rila Monastery is absolutely the top sight in Bulgaria, above the superb capital, Sophia, above a trip to picturesque Plovdiv.

Rila Monastery and tree. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.



Rila Monastery, Bulgaria. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

The pictures speak for themselves. The outer walls and ceilings are decorated with religious themes and moral murals from Adam and Eve and the serpent tempting them to eat the apple, onwards.

What will it cost you in time and money? We hired a car for the day and drove there from our walking tour centre of Borovets. Other costs were the parking outside 5 Leva. No charge to go into the monastery nor to enter the main church, however extra for the museum, or a guidebook, or a human guide, or to climb the tower.

A panel in the entry arch gives you the basics. To summarise: the area was the refuge for a hermit. After several years of being alone, communing with God, the holy recluse gathered a huge crowd of disciples and ended up with this magnificent, monastery. You might like to read about the history in advance.

Make sure in the church to see the grave of the last king, who loved the monastery so much that he built a railway out towards it.

The complex has two shops selling books, cards, religious items, red rosary bead bracelets. Also an eatery at the back.

About the author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Plovdiv in Bulgaria, the Perfect side trip from Sofia, For Photos, Wine Tasting,

The pictures of Plovdiv's old town houses and museums look gorgeous. Plovdiv is a European city of culture in 2019 so lots of events are organized. Trips to Plovdiv are offered from Sofia and other cities, but cheaper if you share a trip with three or more, and start early in the morning.

We hired a car and drove from Borovets, mountainside ski and walking centre, to Plovdiv city and back in a day.

Just outside Borovets is a village with an army tank on the main square, and what looks like a small plane in a front garden.

Our first stop was a detour to a winery on the outskirts of Plovdiv. We saw the oak wood barrels and stainless steel vats and were given a free taste of three wines. If we had given them warning, they would have ordered in some snacks to go with the wine.

We then drove to the centre of Plovdiv and parked buying a three hour parking coupon from the strolling warden.

The tourist office in the centre gave us a map and suggested a restaurant.Right in the centre is an excavated Roman ruin, with a balcony restaurant facing it. Our friends sent us a picture of themselves drinking strawberry milkshakes overlooking the Roman ruin.

Beside the sunken Roman is a modern mosque. Walk on uphill on the cobbled narrow streets thought the craft quarter. The old houses are painted in bright colours and some have overhanging balconies. Many walls are painted with giant murals, or graffiti.

We had lunch. The toilets had a sign saying put your toilet paper in the bin, not down the toilet. (Same as in Greece.)

At the top is a small cathedral, free to enter, like all the Orthodox Christian buildings. No photos! Inside it was highly ornate, and dark.

We had lunch at Smokini.

Travel and tour tips:
TOURS
Free Plovdiv tour at 2 pm Oct to April and 6 pm May to September. No need to book. Just show up.
www.freeplovdivtour.com

VITISTOUR
Wine tour of Bulgaria, Plovdiv tours by car, bike or scoot; Plovdiv Communist tours.
facebook.com/vitistour

VISITS
Free visits: First Thursday of the month for students and retired people.

HOTELS
Hotel Rila, 2010 Borovets, Bulgaria, reception tel:+359 750 32441
www.rilaborovets.com

Winery estate DRAGOMIR
Moving from near Plovdiv to another nearby address between June and September.

WINE TASTING
The House of Distillation, Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

www.bulgariawinetours.com
Half day and full day wine tours from European 65 per person.

Facebook: street.of.crafts.plovdiv

Welcomemaps.eu plovdiv

Walking tour of Plovdiv from !2 euros, every day at 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 hours, lasting around 3 hours, includes map and a coupon for 15% offPyldin restaurant, 3 entrance  tickets to Small Basilica, Amenian museum trakart. Starting point
1 Rayko Daskalov st (tourist info centre).

Maps
Large free map from
Official Tourism Portal:
visitplovdiv.com

Wine Map Bulgaria

Useful Phrases Card from
365 Culture Tour Of Sophia (Costs about 22 Leva)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plovdiv_Synagogue

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

How Your Views Of Hotels Can Change - My Hotel Review of Rila Hotel in Borovets, Bulgaria

I am glad I did not write a review of our hotel on the first night because by day two my impressions of the hotel had completely changed.

Borovets is a ski resort south of Sofia, Bulgaria's capital. From the city you can see the mountains, the Balkans, the Rila mountains. Borovets means pine (tree forest) in Bulgarian. The hotel is the Rila hotel.

Both the Rila hotel, named after the mountain it backs onto, and its neighbour, the Samokovo hotel, named after the nearby town, were built in the same era, the 1980s, according to the friendly and helpful man, Antonio, in the Rila hotel spa.

My first impression of the hotel was not brilliant. The lifts were out of sight of the reception. At the end of the corridor.

Lifts?
To get from reception to the restaurant you climb a spiral staircase. This is a ski resport. Heaven help you if you brought granny to babysit (there is a childrens playroom so they expect kids. Or a skier could have a sports injury and want to go upstairs without hobbling back and forward from the lifts to reception and the restaurant. When we checking out, I discovered they have lifts in the hall but these were being renovated. If I had seen a sign explaining that the lifts were being refurbished, I would have understood and been understanding.

Views?
 I did not like the room beside the noisy service room nor the small bacony and view over the car park, so I popped across to the room opposite and phoned down to ask reception if I could switch rooms. They said the charged another 10 leva (Bulgarian coins) a day for the better view.

We gladly paid to switch to the better view. The big balcony had two chairs - one of which we used so that both of us could sit at the desk typing on the internet.

After switching rooms, we were a lot happier. The room was too hot, and unaccountably the air con did not work because we were told the whole hotel oeprates the air con which is turned off if they deem fit. However, the balcony room door when opened cooled down the room.

Once settled in to a better room with a good view, I was in a better mood to appreciate the colourful red carpet and the knee high shower attachment beside the toilet which turns the toilet into a bidet, the same style as in Singapore and Malaysia.

Downstairs, we met up with our group. Another member of the group had also changed rooms to get away from a room next to the noisy service room.

No - Not Nuggets!
Supper the first evening was a buffet which included only rice, no potatoes, except dried up fries. The meat was dried up beef and dry chicken nuggets.

However, on night two the buffet included super saute potatoes and moist chicken in gravy.