Christmas Holidays.

Hello! I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! We have definitely been on our holidays and have done almost no work around the house whatsoever. It's been great! I'll try not to blab on too much about how we've been doing nothing, so it'll be mostly photos of us relaxing and all the food we've been eating (exciting stuff!)

Christmas

 

Christmas day was really lovely. We woke up early and had a cup of tea in bed before taking Lucy out for a sunny walk. The weather was gorgeous. Back home we had bucks fizz and salmon and eggs for brekkie, before opening our presents. We got each other mostly silly things (my presents included a walking stick and Pete's a plastic gun - which he actually loved.)

Christmas walk

Yummy breakfast



Mulled wine warming up, coffee staying warm



Still a kid!

Bilko hated her socks...

... but she did love playing in the paper.

In the afternoon we had a big Christmas dinner in the garden (amazing!!) which was absolutely delicious - we even had parsnips! - and then spent the rest of the day drinking mulled wine and playing various board games. Perfect.

Chocs, cheese and homemade chutneys.

New Years Eve

 

For New Years we went to Plovdiv. We had booked a hostel right in the centre and in the afternoon we set off to Chirpan to catch the 3.40 train to Plovdiv. We hadn't got the train to Plovdiv before but it was really easy and only took about an hour, so in the future we may opt to do this more often than driving, as it saves the nightmare of driving in a city and is actually cheaper than parking for the day.



 

View from the train of Bulgaria's highest mountain.

Anyway, we arrived at 5ish and walked about 20 mins to the hostel (Hikers Hostel in the old town) which was perfect and had amazing views over the city. But we didn't hang around for long and after a quick shot of rakia with the hostel owner we were off to find our favourite bar and start the night off with an ale! Sadly our favourite bar was closed for a private party (as were, it later turned out, all of the restaurants and we ended up having dinner from a burger stall!) Nevermind, we found a few other nice bars and an especially good one that George had recommended. We ended up staying at that one drinking cheap cocktails until after midnight. There was also a big gig happening in the centre of town with several live acts, which we did stop to watch for a while but we ended up going back to the pub as the -6 temperature got to us! All in all it was a really fun night and a great evening to have our first night out in Plovdiv - we love that city!

Lights and ice skating in the city

Sunset view from the hostel dorm

First beer outside the offie!

Celebrations in the city centre

In the hostel common area

Plovdiv on New Years Day

Walks

As I said the temperature was still hovering at about 16 - 17 degrees on Christmas day, but this was set to only last until the end of the year, so we decided to make the most of the sunshine by going on a few walks. One day we got ready for a day out in the mountains - supposedly only an hour and a half drive away. As we should have learnt by now this was definitely not the case as the roads were absolutely horrendous and with a slightly dodgy van we thought it best to turn around and come home. This was quite disappointing as I have been wanting to visit the Rhodopes for ages, but we did manage to have a nice walk and a picnic by a river, so it wasn't a bad day out after all.

One of the better roads, looking at the snowy mountains.

A very, very bad road - this hole actually went all the way through this BRIDGE with just a twig to warn you not to drive over it. Outrageous.

Another walk we did was over in SG. There is a hill with a track leading up to a radio mast which we followed all the way to the top for gorgeous views across the valley. On the way back down we came across these really long trails of caterpillars all joined together, which we had never seen before (picture and video below!)

Turkey in SG (after Christmas!)

SG

The top!

Huge trail of caterpillars

 

Another afternoon we had a walk around our village, including looking in the old school and discovering a whole new area of the village we hadn't been to yet (not sure how we've managed that - our village is tiny.) On this walk we went down a street where there were several people sitting around a table butchering a wild boar that one of them had caught that morning! It was incredible, they were BBQing some, making sausages with some - and none of it was going to waste, they were sorting all the innards as well. They offered us a sip of rakia, warm homemade bread and some of the cooked meat, which was absolutely delicious. We left when they gave us a slice of raw skin and we couldn't bare to eat it!



Snowdrops in our garden :)

Outside and inside the old school in our village (they had communal toilets apparently.)

Our village.

Men butchering a boar

Small jobs

In the warmer days Pete got several layers of linseed oil on our big outdoor table, so hopefully it will survive the winter.

We also did the last bit of insulating the outside tap and the indoor pipes upstairs where it never gets warm. This was actually done in an emergency after our upstairs tap froze - thankfully it hasn't happened again so we think we have fixed the problem.

Outside tap covered

Pipes are wrapped up warm (obviously they will eventually be properly insulated and in the walls - for now sheets will do.)

The other thing I did was to try and connect the plug sockets in the yellow room, as they still haven't been done since we finished the room! Now I have connected a light fitting myself, and re-connected several light switches and plug sockets I thought it would be a breeze. I was only half right. Firstly it is just a really fiddly and annoying job anyway, and then, even though I obviously had the fuse turned off, when I touched the wire with the plyers it kept tripping the main fuse for the house. We since have thought it is probably because it is meant to be on a circuit and at the moment it's not, but whatever it was we don't know enough about electrics and we got scared, so I stopped. I am 99.9% sure I was doing everything correctly and I did manage to get one extra plug socket in before the scare, so that's good I suppose (don't worry I haven't left any live wires sticking out the wall. I hope.)

I also made two mobiles with shells and other bits and bobs I have collected over the years and they are now hanging in the bathroom.

Oh, and we hung up our clothes rack in the yellow room as we can't afford a tumble dryer and it's too cold to dry clothes outside. It's more useable now the Christmas tree is down!

Food

Not much to say... we've been eating nice food and here are a few pics.

My tea is never big enough so Pete got me this mug for Christmas!

Making the most of our oven!!

Cauliflower cheeeeese

Home made pumpkin banitsa (Bulgarian speciality)

TOAD IN THE HOLE! YES!

We found avocados in the veg shop and they sell quails eggs in the market (they are so cheap) so we had a posh breakfast :)

SNOW! Sorry there are LOADS of photos.

First spattering of snow.. this is nothing!

A day or so before New Year we woke up to find the garden white. It wasn't very deep though and it melted away quite fast. A couple of days after New Year though we woke up to find the garden looking very white and snow still heavily coming down. It kept snowing for a couple of days and we had lovely walks around the (very quiet) village in our snow suits and boots that we'd bought a while back.

Out in the snow storm!

Staying warm :)

Getting deeper..

Looking pretty at night

Angels!

Village centre

The animals have also been enjoying the snow! Bilko hasn't ever seen snow before so she was quite apprehensive at first, but after a bit of an explore she seems to like it and keeps meowing to go out! We assume Lucy has seen snow before and she has been in her element - running through and rolling around in it!

Avoiding the snow at first

Wolf dog

For the last two days the chickens have been hard work. Their water has been freezing every hour and the food just keeps getting covered in snow. They've survived though and today has been much better and they are out of the coop and happyily eating.

Today it has stopped snowing, the sun is out and it has been slightly warmer (a whopping 3 degrees or so) so we decided to come out from the yellow room and the warmth of the fire and have a snow day! We've built a snow lady, an igloo, rolled around in the snow and even had a go at sledging - although this wasn't too successful as the snow is quite powdery and deep (about a foot in places.) It's been a fantastic day!! We are also quite pleased to find that a tractor has been around the village to plough the streets and has even made it all the way up the hill to us - although, unless it's completely necessary, I don't think we'll be braving a drive until it's melted a bit. Here's even more photos of us playing...

Pete shovelled our path

Fat balls out for the birds

Not going out for a while!

Past the ankles



Off I go...

..and wipe out!!

Snow Lady Bulgaria, face 1.

Snow Lady Bulgaria, face 2.

In our igloooo

Views from the igloo

After we destroyed the igloo!

We have stayed very warm and toasty in the house and have made use of our frozen dinners, cooked over the woodburner. We are still enjoying having some time off, and with the snow here there is not much work we can get on with anyway - even if we wanted to.

That's all for now, Happy January everyone! These are our names in the snow in Cyrillic (we think anyway) can you tell which is which!!? xx