Plovdiv, day 2

A good start to the day: I got in fact more than 8 hours of sleep last night. Not bad at all. Surprising, too.

Of course, to start off my day's exploration I need some money. Here is what Bulgarian money looks like.

Now if an American man is travelling with an American woman, he can simply use her purse to store the items he doesn't want to carry himself. If a man is travelling alone, and if the day foretells thunder showers, and if the man wants to have his camera, credit cards, American money, Bulgarian money, an umbrella, a Nook, a passport, a city map, and the possibility of carrying some souvenir t-shirt without holding it in his hands all day, then he needs a murse. Yes, carrying a murse is not manly, but when you get to my age, you don't giving a sweet-tart about what a bunch of furriners think about your red-blooded American self, so you damn well carry a murse. Plus I learned the habit in Russia, and they are manly enough to invade the Crimea without giving a damn about what Americans think, so that's manly enough for me. Here's my murse from Russia.

I'm living in a part of town called Капанa “The Trap,” which doubtless sounds bad in English but is downright prestigious in Plovdiv. I first head to the north part of Капана to see the Marítsa river, small and slow flowing, but which nonethless defines the city.

This part of town has old narrow streets, many of which are cobblestone, lined with tall, old trees. Lots of coffee shops and gyros shops, although here they are known as donér, not gyros. Makes it easy to find food you like.

A mosque near the river.

As I head southward I go through an underpass and spot a shop selling this t-shirt.

Praise heaven! Now I know where to come for all my lesbian clothing needs.

Just past the carpet munching is a kiosk selling corn on the cob. Yup, that's Kung Fu panda doing the advertising.

My former Bulgarian teacher, Cleo Protokhristova, wants to take me to lunch at a wonderful hotel/restaurant called the “Odeon.” For you Spanish speakers this has nothing to do with the verb odiar. The English word comes via Middle French (πτύω) via Late Latin from a contraction of Ancient Greek ἀοιδή, which means ‘song.’ An odeon was a place for public singing performances, and this hotel is located next to an ancient odeon. Pictures of the ancient odeon, hopefully, will come tomorrow. Here are Cleo and Don.

The interior is beautifully done in blues that bring to mind the work of the recently deceased David Collins. (Personally, I don't give a damn about design, but my friend Jim is very design-oriented, and he pointed out the article. Thanks, Jim! To my surprise I actually enjoyed the article.)

I like to photograph the food in new places. Cleo advises me to start with tarator, a cold soup of yogurt and cucumbers. Very tasty, especially since the temp got to 92°F with 52% humidity. (The humidity in Phoenix was 2% the day before I left...)

Damn, I forgot to photo the пиле пикантно (spicy chicken) main dish. Entirely adequate. For desert Cleo insisted I try a specialty gateau. The cake was something half-way between a chocolate mousse and a chocolate brownie. In the States we would have called it a lava cake. Very tasty.

After lunch Cleo and I wander down roads lined with linden trees. Despite having lived on Linden Street in Tucson, I've never seen a Linden tree before.

Right now the city has a delicate, sweet smell to it. It turns out that is from the linden blossoms, from which you can make, so Cleo tells me, a very nice tea.