Greetings from Plovdiv! Plovdiv is said to be the oldest continuously inhabited town in all of Europe! We got off to another early start and consequently had the old town entirely to ourselves for the first hour or so which was wonderful. The kids loved spotting all the colorfully painted buildings.

Hisar Kapiya gateway.

Another ancient theatre. Couldn’t be bothered paying entry given the kids have been to 2 already in the last few weeks!

The gentlemen in the background ran into his shop to gift the kids lollipops as they walked past. As if they needed anymore sugar this holiday! Side note: I love that in Europe it’s completely commonplace for the staff/owner of an establishment to be sitting down eating/drinking/watching the world go by – rather than needing to always pretend to be busy.

We went to walk through the “Balbinov House” however when we approached the ticket lady she informed us the house was closed to tourists as there was a concert on. However she went on to say that the concert was free and we were welcome to attend! It started 5 minutes after we sat down and thankfully all the kids were beautifully behaved. Something we never would have risked actually booking not knowing if it would work out for us to attempt taking 3 chatterbox children to a recital!  The classical pianists were all brilliant and the opera singer nearly brought down the the house.

Noelle has been keen to show off her “frong muscles” so hauled the backpack around most of the day.

Still loving these drinking fountains! Noelle’s never been so well hydrated.

Picnic in the park. Half these kids names were Alex and one of their mothers. Does seem to be the #1 name in Bulgaria across all ages and genders.

Gio opted for a fairy floss that rivaled the size of the one at the Dalby Show. He didn’t quite finish it all thankfully.

Random excavation sites like these are scattered all throughout the city. You can just wander through them at leisure.

I have struggled to find a Roman Catholic Sunday Mass option that fits into our driving itinerary tomorrow (majority of churches obviously are Orthodox) so we opted for the Vigil Mass at St. Louis. It started at least 8 minutes early and was all over by 6.20! Mind you there was only about 6 other people there.
We ended up being quite thankful it was a swift Mass as getting the bus back to our remote commy block was a fairly drawn out exercise. Jesse and I are now enjoying an excellent bottle of red from the local wine region here. Seems to be some of the best we have had so far. A few ended up down the drain!