Welp, yay!

I had that “ohhhh yeah I don’t like cities” feeling while taking the bus through Plovdiv, but the old town section of the city is great. The Hiker’s Hostel is tiny and amidst historic, renovated houses that all have names, along really rough cobblestone roads. The Old Town covers three hills, and from the tops you can see all of Plovdiv and the mountains to the south. So yep, the first night at the hostel was great- I wandered around relishing the quiet and cobblestoniness, and blomp oh yes well there’s a 2000 year old amphitheater. Apparently there’s a lot of archaeology around that’s only been partly excavated. Construction workers happened upon a Roman (I think) stage while building a hotel, it was briefly surveyed, and the hotel is now perched right above the site. Ok, the hostel really is great- the staff made a barbeque and fantastic potato salady stuff for us the first night, all 9 people in the full hostel sat around late talking, and I learned a bunch about western Europe from the other guests. And, we fed kittens.