A. and I took a little road trip this weekend. We went to five different cultural, historical and geological sites all from the 100 Bulgarian tourist sites booklet.

We went to Botevgrad to see the clock tower. Interestingly the clock tower doesn't have a clock face but apparently it does chime on the hour. There's also an amazing museum in Botevgrad.

I know, I know. It's Botevgrad. This town isn't even mentioned in the Lonely Planet Bulgaria guidebook. How can it have a great museum? I am not sure. Here's the thing. It's a little museum in the old town court building. The displays are well laid out and labeled in Bulgarian and English.

A site before the city of Vratsa we drove up a winding road to see a monument for Hristo Botev.  There was lots of fog which made the visibility pretty bad but it was still worth it.  On the way back to Vratsa, we stopped at a house museum for Baba Iliica. This is an attractive little house with a interesting history.

We stopped to get the stamp for the Hristo Botev monument but then ended up staying to hear more about Baba Iliica. It turns out that Ivan Vasov wrote a story about her that many people assume is a just that a story he imagined but in fact, the story he wrote about her grows out of a the life of a real woman--Baba Iliica. For those of you who speak Bulgarian, <a href="http://www.litclub.com/library/bg/vasov/bulgarka.htm" target="_blank">here's a link to the story</a>.

The watcher and keeper of the house museum was a wonderful little woman who lives across the street. When we got there, the house was locked but she spotted us and hollered at us. Then she spent a lot of time talking to A. in Bulgarian and looking at me encouragingly. At the end, she told me that it was great that I am a foreigner and that I am interested in Bulgarian history. <em>Aw</em>.

Then we headed on to a cave also near Vratsa--Ledenika. This is a big cave with lots of stairs and a lot of nooks and crannies to squeeze through. You can't take pictures in the cave to protect the bats and beetles who live there but that's okay because pictures in caves are usually pretty bad.

From the cave we drove to Belogradchik. We spent the night in Belogradchik and checked out the rocks in the morning.

The rocks are so great. I didn't know what to expect but really, wow.

Then we drove to the Magurata cave. This cave is well known for early cave drawings which is why we went to check it out. Here's the bad news, you can't see the drawings anymore become people drew on top of them. <em>Yuck</em>. Why do people do these things. Anyhow, this cave is really open and has the biggest stalagmite/stalactite in Bulgaria. That's pretty cool.

We then had to head back to Sofia but not before I bought 50 leva worth of Magura wine in the village of Rabisha. It was a busy weekend.