House hunting holiday. Part 1.

Our first couple of days were spent visiting Sofia (we didn't go last time) and Lake Batak. Sofia was a pleasant city - we loved the underground ancient city and the cheap beers and banitsa. Canape Connection (the hostel we stayed in) was really cool and we found a great vegetarian restaurant - which we certainly didn't expect in Bulgaria!

 

At Batak we stopped one night at Eco Camping Batak, which was a very nice campsite in a fantastic location. Unfortunetly it was a bit wet but we had a nice evening a great (and so cheap!) meal out in the village. We also took note of the cool eco toilet and shower block.

 

The next morning we drove a couple of hours to Chirpan to meet the Cheap-Bulgarian-Houses estate agent. We met a friendly couple - M (Polish, living and working in Bulgaria over ten years) and D (English, living in Bulgaria around four years). We told them in more detail about what we had in our minds and they decided to show us a few properties that we hadn't actually asked to see. Happy with this we drove off into the hills, passing lavender fields and wild flowers, to a few small villages North of Chirpan. The area is gorgeous - rolling greens hills and pretty stone houses. There is a big hotel being built just outside Chirpan which shows there is development in this area (very important as many villages get abandoned and loose power and water) and a new motorway to Istanbul being built. Also it is about half way across Bulgaria, between Bourgas and Sofia, and we know from personal experience that a campsite is well needed here unless you want to cross the whole country in one day. It was all very ideal.

We spent the day viewing about 8 properties (actually only 1 we'd chosen online!) The prices ranged from 6000 to 12000 GBP and the conditions also varied. Nothing we viewed had any kind of toilet and some didn't even have floors. Some were old and rustic, one new and un-finished (literally just bricks). Luckily it was exactly what we were expecting so we weren't too shocked. Anyway we like a challenge. We also visited M and D's house to see the end result of a renovation, which was really good to see.  We loved the area and some of the properties were interesting but nothing blew us away. There was one property we quite liked but we didn't have the keys for. (Actually this was quite normal - we climbed through several windows that day!) M and D said they did have the keys though so we could visit again the next day. After a long day and a lovely evening we went to sleep in our posh hotel room.    

Some of the properties we viewed.