Veliko Tarnovo: "City of the Tsars"

We headed out to Veliko Tarnovo the weekend of the 19th and stayed Sat-Mon. It was nice and gloomy, with clouds low over the mountains. Perfect for a road trip! (not sarcastic) Veliko Tarnovo is also known as "City of the Tsars" and was the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire -- said in my best lecturing voice...

It was a 3-ish hour drive, and after getting to our hotel and "convincing" the kiddos to take a nap, we headed up in the afternoon to see the gigantic fortress spread over the top of Tsarevets Hill. This hilltop was used by pretty much everybody who ever claimed the area. It is a great position after all... The Thracians, Romans, Byzantines, Slavs, and Bulgars all used it as a defensive position/fortress. 22 successive kings ruled from the palace here. And apparently it was quite the place. Just foundations now, but back in the day...oh yeah.

I'm not sure if this is the tower, but one of them was where Tsar Kaloyan imprisoned the Latin emperor Baldwin I after his capture when the crusaders were defeated in the early 1200s. Then he was executed. Hmm...no, I don't think that's the tower. But I already wrote all that, so it's staying. At the other end of the fortress complex was a big rock known as Execution Rock. Guess what happened there? Yep. Traitors, etc. were shoved off it into the Yantra River below. Though from what we calculated, unless the river was mighty different back then, they probably met their fate along the rocky cliff before they ever made it into the water.

(Oh, THAT'S Baldwin Tower, the one Bran's headed towards!)

Bran has discovered that the hilt of his foam swords are much more scream-inflicting than the foam part and now often decides to fight that way, much to the dismay and annoyance of the rest of us. Especially when we're attacked, unsuspecting, from behind. No sense of honor yet, that one.

We paid, yes paid, for the tykes to dress up as little knights. This was at the gate going in, and we didn't do it till on the way out, and ALL Bran talked about the entire time we were inside the fortress was dressing up like an owie-pokie knight. So obviously we had to let the poor boy live the dream. We half hoped he'd forget about it so that his cheap -- I mean, frugal -- parents could slip past, but nope. And I'm glad he didn't, he enjoyed it so much!

He was so cute, took it all very seriously. This was the biggest smile we could get out of him. And his little arm stayed stuck up in the air the whole time. He was seriously frozen in place. Just moved his eyes back and forth. I love our little Knight!

Nuala didn't take it all that seriously. But then again, being a knight isn't all that big a deal to her...

Coming out of the gate looking at the city.

Looking back towards the fortress.

Looking down on part of the town of Veliko Tarnovo from the drawbridge. You can still see part of the fortress curving off in the top right corner...told ya, it's huge!

Sunday morning, right before heading out to church, N&B were highly entertained for several minutes watching the espresso maker make hot water. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything Mormon-friendly in the little basket of coffees and teas, but it was still quite engrossing. We actually didn't find the church...we had an address off the internet, but couldn't find it, and had we found it, it wouldn't have mattered. The missionaries in our branch told us last Sunday that 3 weeks earlier the branch in Veliko Tarnovo moved into a hotel lobby for its meeting-place. Oh well. We still had a nice quiet Sunday, did Sunday-ish things.

Playing at a local park was a definite highlight of the weekend for Nuala and Bran. I don't get it... they'll hardly ever stop and smile nicely for me while they're playing...weird, huh?! Like they're busy or something!

Cool picture above someone's garage of a tsar being crowned.

This Church of Sveti Dimitar... during its consecration in 1185, the Tsars Asen and Petar (brothers) proclaimed an uprising against Byzantine rule, which led to the 2nd Bulgarian empire. That lasted until 1396.

You can kinda see some of the fortress walls above this part of the city, too. Man, we spent FORever on this bridge...throwing rocks and sticks and rotting pieces of wood in. Watching the fish down below...good stuff, bridges and rivers. Luckily no one dove through the huge spaces between the slats. There were a couple of close calls with Z, but I got to him in time...haha.

We could just look forever at the houses, etc. lining the hill up from the gorge. It was so picturesque...hence, the pictures.

Nuala scaring a snail half to death on the walk up the skinny side streets to the main street. It's so tempting to pry them off walls, poor little things.

Our hotel is down there somewhere. Sigh...so pretty...

Cats, cats, cats! Everywhere! This little guy reminded Z and I of the ill-fated Tucker. He was so friendly and playful. N&B loved him.

Wow, this looks so out of place after all those Veliko T. pics. We stopped at a cave on the way back, and really wished we coulda gone on a nice hike. The scenery around it was beautiful. However, the whole being pregnant, and 2-year olds, and 4-hour trail and naptime thing just all added up to a really bad idea, so we made do with the cool cave and a mini-hike. And then we went home!

Well, no. Then the kiddos fell asleep and Z and I had the brillant plan to go out of our way to a teeny little place in the book that sounded cool but ended up taking way longer than we thought and wasn't all that cool but maybe had just lost some of its coolness because of how long it was taking and because the sweetly-sleeping children were starting to stir and then it took us about an extra hour to get home and the previously-sweetly-sleeping children were turning into very tantrumy, can't-please-'em-with-ANYthing children. But the drive was pretty, and we liked how our GPS was totally blank except for our little car.

Anyway, we loved Veliko Tarnovo! It was nice to take a little bit longer of a trip, actually stay at a hotel instead of smushing the whole visit into a day.