Our third Christmas gift of the year (following the sports/event badminton match in Vietnam and the science/attraction animal cafes in Japan) was a two-night trip to Plovdiv covering the categories of arts and overnight.
Plovdiv was an obvious choice for this, having been selected by the EU as 2019’s European Capital of Culture. It has a fascinating layered history dating back to 6000 BC. It was called Philippopolis by the Romans and was the capital of their province called Thracia, so it has lots of Roman ruins. Most of these were covered until relatively recently. For example, the Roman theater was only excavated in the 1970s. After the Romans there were other empires, notably the Bulgars then the Ottomans and then eventually it became part of Bulgaria in the late 19th century.
With a little research earlier in the summer, we discovered that Plovdiv has an opera series at their Roman theater. We loved our opera experience at the Roman theater in Ephesus, Turkey, so planned our trip around attending that. We were able to buy our tickets online from home and went ahead and booked a hotel with credit card points.
After arriving in Bansko in early August, we looked into transportation options. Since there wasn’t a clear direct bus to Plovdiv, we decided to rent a car for the trip, which would occur during the last week of our month-long stay. I didn’t have much luck with online car research but there was a big sign for a car rental place in our neighborhood that had great Google reviews, so I used WhatsApp to contact them. Vlad at the rental agency gave me a price of 40 euros per day for an automatic with full insurance for 10 euros per day more. This sounded like a great deal, so we decided to book for two days so we’d be able to have one full day to enjoy Plovdiv. It was good I got the insurance because he ended up wanting payment in cash, meaning we wouldn’t be covered by the primary car rental insurance I have with one of our credit cards.
On the day of our trip to Plovdiv, Vlad was right on time at noon to meet us near the sign, using the little wine bar next door for the paperwork. He was very friendly and had spent summers in the US as a college student. He gave us a great tip about avoiding the mountain road recommended by Google, which he said was narrow and full of potholes and that we’d lose cellphone coverage. He advised navigating to the town of Velingrad first, then on to Plovdiv. We took his advice and had no issues driving to or from Plovdiv, and still enjoyed a scenic mountain road.
We arrived in Plovdiv a little before 4 p.m. Chad circled the block while I figured out the parking situation with our hotel, Old Plovdiv House (review below). They had a reserved place for us right in front, so that was handy. I’d replaced the hotel we booked from Missouri with this one because it had the paid parking availability for the car and also a little kitchenette, which allowed us to bring leftovers along to heat up for our second night to save a little money. The location was also great, in the arty neighborhood called the Kapana.
After settling in, we walked to one of Plovdiv’s main attractions, the Episcopal Basilica of Philippopolis. These ruins of a church built in the mid-4th century AD feature two levels of mosaic tiles that have been recovered and partially reconstructed: a lower level featuring shapes and patterns from the original church and a top level from a couple hundred years later featuring native and exotic birds. Both were cool to see and the site had good interpretive signs bringing the history to life. The excavation and restoration is still ongoing, so there was interesting information about that as well. One of the major funders was the America for Bulgaria Foundation, which is worth looking into. The cost for the basilica was 15 lev each, about $9 USD.
After the Basilica, we walked through the ruins of the Roman forum and through a nice park, which we returned to after dinner to watch the singing fountain show. We also stopped for a cocktail at a cute little bar called Postale near the forum. Our dinner in our Kapana neighborhood was excellent. We stopped into a cute restaurant called Tams House around the block from our hotel on our way to the Basilica and got an 8 p.m. reservation, which we definitely needed. Our meal (salad with grilled burrata and bread with various spreads) was really delicious.
The next day, I downloaded a paid audio tour for us to follow through many of the other Plovdiv sites. In addition to the Roman stuff, a big attraction is their elaborate 18th century houses. You can get a combined ticket to see several of these (five for the price of three at 7 lev each, just over $4) but we decided to just do two plus a museum.
We started with Klianti House, built in the mid-18th century in the Ottoman style and known for its 19th century murals. The Ottoman style houses have protruding windows (almost like bay windows) and lots of lovely old wood. There were just a few rooms to see in Klianti house but we enjoyed them, especially the murals, which featured port cities, reflecting the owner’s work in trade.
Hindliyan’s House was even more impressive, with a beautifully painted exterior and numerous rooms on display, including a Turkish bathroom. If you’re only going to see one historic house in Plovdiv, I think this is the best one. Of course, we didn’t see most of them, but I did a lot of research to narrow down the two we chose to visit.
Between the two houses, we passed a viewpoint and a pretty new Orthodox church, as well as the Roman Theater where we’d be seeing the opera that night.
Next we headed up to the old fort above the city, Nebet Tepe, passing by the Old Town and Hisar Kapia gate from the old city walls along the way. The Nebet Tepe ruins were quite impressive to wander around and had great views of the other hills that Plovdiv is known for (it is called the City of Seven Hills). The ruins were a bit hot and it about noon, so we stopped for a recovery beer with a view at a craft brewery just outside the ruins before walking back to the Kapana neighborhood for lunch.
We went back to our neighborhood to enjoy a lunch break at a vegetarian restaurant called Veggic, which was excellent. We split a veggie burrito and rice bowl with vegan sausage. Then we headed over to the Regional Ethnographic Museum, which was in another beautiful house and had some interesting displays on Bulgarian village life. We enjoyed a bit of a rest in our room and then did a late afternoon walk along the river and then up to the old Clock Tower for more good views of the city.
In the evening, we heated up the leftover roasted eggplant pasta I’d brought along in our room, then got gelato on our way to the opera, which started at 8:30 p.m. Our opera experience was again very special, though again we didn’t stay for the full thing. This performance was The Barber of Seville and the first act was nearly two hours long. The performers and songs were great and they played up the comedy really well. However, we decided we had enough during the intermission and headed back to our hotel.
The next morning we got up and made the 3-hour drive back to Bansko. I was especially happy to see a train on the small-gauge railway line that runs near Bansko. We’d thought that taking the train to another little town would be something fun to do but never found the time. The diesel car we rented got great gas mileage – we only spent about $20 to replace the gas we used.
I’m so glad our Christmas tradition gave us the excuse to spend a couple of days in Plovdiv. It’s a great city and we’d definitely return.
Review of Old Plovdiv House hotel – We reserved this hotel with credit card points and it was perfect for our two-night stay in Plovdiv. We were able to park our rental car right out front for a reasonable fee of 15 lev per night. The location is perfect and walkable to everything so we left the car parked there for our whole stay. Our double room was small but very comfortable and the kitchenette was functional enough for making a simple meal. The person at the front desk was friendly and helpful. We loved being in the Kapana near so many great restaurants. It was a perfect choice.