The World Of Woodbury: Veliko Tarnovo

Sunday after our long, beautiful drive we arrived in Veliko Tarnovo. It was pitch black and we had a true adventure trying to find our little boutique hotel. The GPS kept telling us to just turn right even though there were just rows and rows of houses to the right. So finally we just picked a street to the right and took it... and drove down and down and down while the road got tighter and tighter and tighter. Seriously at several points I could have reached out the window and touched the houses and Taylor could have done the same. It was insane. And pitch black. Finally after some fancy maneuvering from Taylor we were headed back up and finally onto a main road. After almost an hour we finally found the right tiny one way road and our hotel. Did I mention these are all cobblestone roads with lots of potholes? And sheer drop offs on some sides???

In the morning this is what our hotel looked like.

And we were supposed to have these amazing views from our balconies, but instead all we could see was the fog.

Still kind of a fun place to wake up in and the little restaurant attached to the hotel was amazing.

Taylor's mom really wanted to see what a school in Bulgaria was like so she'd contacted the local high school and asked for a tour. Taylor stayed with her to help with translating but since neither Jeff nor I wanted to waste our 1 day in the city listening to translations, we set off to see the old fort and castle in town.

Veliko Tarnovo is the Old Bulgarian Capital. It dates back to 300 BC and was the strongest fortress in the country until the Ottomans took it in the 14th century, It's easy to see why it was so defensible- the river literally turns in a triangle shape around this very high mountain creating a naturally small entrance on one side and 3 steep cliffs on the others.

Sadly much of the city has been left to disrepair and is only now being excavated and preserved and rebuilt in some areas.

It was really neat to be allowed to walk wherever we wanted and see what life would have been like back then.

It was also really neat to have Jeff there because he's so knowledgable about history. You can see 2 other mountains off int he distance and he explained how you can see the exposed rock there. It was too costly in manpower to move stone very far so usually they'd pick a tall hill or mountain and then just carve away the rock on the top to use to fortify building around the lower areas. So most castles have huge caverns under them where they dug out the rock. Here they just left the exposed rock that was naturally there and then added to it with rock in the center of the hill. That also helped flatten the center so homes and buildings, churches and castles could be built within the walls.

The Veliko Tarnovo castle hasn't been rebuilt but the church has in a smaller version. It's of course the highest point.

And the views from the top are just spectacular. You can see the river on both the left and a bit on the right with just that small strip of land they had to defend as an entrance. The river literally goes right around this whole hill fortress. And modern Veliko Tarnovo is in the distance.

Inside, instead of creating a replica of an old cathedral, they've used modern artists to draw. The cathedrals we saw were all amazingly ornate but this was just fascinating because of the modern take on the same bible stories. And they let us take pictures which was rare.

Some of the foundations and buildings have been rebuilt around the castle and the area really was huge which almost 15,000 people living inside at one time.