A little bit of Serbia

Every day now seems to start of with misty mornings & hopefully through the day the sun manages to get through at some time. We drove through Arbanasi which meant we only really saw the views overlooking Veliko Tarnovo & not stopping to see the other buildings as we had many other places to get to today. 

We drove up the Shipka Pass in sunshine through golden late autumn forests & no sign of snow. We then headed East making good progress along well surfaced roads with little traffic. It was getting later in the day & we were enjoying the sunset when suddenly we seemed to approach a wall of cloud & the sunlight vanished. Quickly we were in fog & driving was becoming dangerous. We had to stop earlier than intended & found a small road off the highway where there were a few safe places off the road with not too much passing traffic. It was as place where a lot of trade type waste is dumped, probably including this old kiosk, but we feel no one will be bothered or probably know we are here.

In the morning the fog was a little clearer as it was now daylight, but it kept coming back in patches. It was all worth it though reaching one of the highlights of our trip at Belogradchik with it fortresses & a sea of rocks in todays mists. 

On another day I am sure it would look quite different but still stunning, but with the low winter sun & the mist in the valley it was one of the finest views we have encountered in our worldwide travels. Even better, looking at our photo's so many of them seem to have come out really well, now we just need an enormous panoramic screen to view them.

We were running out of Bulgaria now having driven West to East & had a choice to get back to Romania, either the Ferry over the Danube or a small diversion through Serbia. Of course we went for the Serbia option as it's another new country for us. There are more complications as Serbia is not an EC country, so different border formalities & currency & vehicle insurance though they only checked our vehicle reg. Document. Despite there only being about 6 vehicles in front of us it took over an hour waiting in the rubbish strewn queue (what a lovely introduction to your country) to get through all the border formalities. I think some big-wig type was visiting & everything stopped, we could tell this wasn't normal as all the local Bulgarian & Serbian drivers were getting agitated.

We only had about 40 miles to drive & no local currency so we didn't get much chance to see the country. First impressions were the houses were much larger & more modern & everywhere seemed 'richer' than Bulgaria. It may be because a lot of our route was following the Danube so many place had nice river front settings & 'beaches' There is a road bridge across the border to Romania which we crossed over in the failing light & found a small side road to park up on close to the river with the now almost obligatory railway line that seems to pass all the places we end up sleeping for the night.