Sofia and Bulgaria doesn’t seem to be high on the tourist agenda.

Tour buses are rare and groups of snap happy visitors, doing the conga line, following their flag wielding leaders, are nowhere to be seen.

If fact we feel more out of place here than we have in months.

It has it’s advantages but the lack or tourist also means that there is no tourist infrastructure.

In Turkey we organised 3 weeks of touring, with hotels, transfers and transport, in about 3 hours, here in Sofia, we were told we needed at least a week.

So we decided to DIY.

After walking around Sofie, a European city with an obvious Communist past, we booked a trip on a shuttle bus that took us to Rila Monastery and Boyana Church.

Rial Monastery was founded in the 10th century and is regarded as one of the most important monuments for the Eastern Orthodox Church.

You can’t take snaps of the frescos inside the church but the ones outside are enough to take your breath away.

We then visited Boyana Church, and like Rial Monestary is also UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It was originally constructed in the 10th century and then had a few additions after that, in the 13th and 19th centuries.

The outside is rather ordinary but the inside has frescos, painted in 1259 and so lifelike, are said to be the predecessors of European Renaissance art.

Unfortunately no snaps were permitted inside.

 

Today it’s a work in progress, with scaffolding, cranes and even a small railroad to move large chunks of marble around the construction sight.

Everywhere you look there is new marble. Columns have been straightened, new pieces put in place and new pediments added. There’s even wheelchair access, via a lift, that runs up the cliff on the north side.

This restoration project has been going on since 1975 and is due for completion soon.

Restoration works aren’t just happening on the big rock, they are all over Athens. Every time they dig a hole, they seem to discover another ancient artifact.

That’s no more evident than with the new Acropolis Museum.

This amazing addition to the world of archaeology is a living display, being built over an archeological dig that’s happening right under your feet. Much of the ground floor and courtyard is made of glass, so you can see the work as it happens.

There is even space in the new museum for the frieze that Lord Elgin purloined all those years ago.

The top floor is dedicated to the Parthenon and built to the same size and proportions, with sweeping views up to the Acropolis. As they find more of the original monument they slot them into place in the display.

Restoration work has been going on in Athens for millennia and in fact the city has always been changing and redefining itself.

Apart from the current work on the Acropolis, the Stoa of Attalos, in the Ancient Agora, was completely rebuilt in the 1950s’.

Even the meat market on Athinus Street has undergone change since I was last here. Now instead of sides of lamb sitting out in the Athenian heat, they are all refrigerated and some are even wrapped in plastic.

Most of the Plaka and Monastiraki are entirely made up of walking streets and the little cafes with bain maries full of moussaka and Greek potatoes are all gone.

Athens is different to what I remember and I am sure that if ever I return, it will be different again.

 

Especially if you have been to Santorini.

The Greek flag isn’t a political statement but rather a reflection of the environment.

Now I don’t know if the blue domes and cubical whitewashed walls, of the Greek Orthodox churches, came before the flag, or whether the flag was inspired by the white foam of waves breaking against the blueness of the Aegean Sea.

The fact is that blue and white is everywhere.

The hotel staff wear blue and white, the table clothes in the restaurants are blue and white. I even think that the seagulls look whiter against the azure blue sky.

And the daily flotilla of cruise ships, disgorging day trippers, are conveniently painted white.

About the only thing that isn’t white are the beaches, they are a dark, grey and stoney and that’s due to the fact that Santorini is built on the remnants of a volcanic caldera.

The most popular villages of Fira, Imerovigli and Oia cling to the side of this ancient volcanic cone. Everywhere you are forced to look down into the blue water -filled void,

Ancient Thera or Fira also sits high above the Aegean, on Mount Messavouno.

It has been inhabited since the 9th century BC, however nothing remains of the original Bronze Age inhabitants. They were all destroyed by the volcano that makes Santorini the geological marvel it is today.

What remains now is from the Hellenistic period and even these ancient white marble columns still contrast with the deep blue sky, and say Greece.

Most people remember Santorini for the sunsets over the caldera, I’ll remember it for blue and white.

Crete is a large island, in fact the largest of the Greek islands measuring 8,336 square kilometers.

Although tourism plays an important part in the economy of Crete, it isn’t reliant on it and there’s evidence of industry and agriculture is everywhere.

There is also a very prominent mountain range, with the last of the Winter snow still clinging to the peaks.

It’s size was further confirmed when we hired a car and spent two days driving east and then southwest and didn’t seem to get anywhere.

We drove about 400km and barely went beyond the olive groves. As Crete is one of the largest producers of extra virgin olive oil, there may not be be much more to see in rural Crete.

We decided that getting a GPS would be a good investment in efficiency and our relationship, as we did get a little lost in both Jordan and Turkey.

Wrong.

To make it easy for the illiterate tourist, most road signs in Crete are written in the Greek and Roman alphabets.

The trouble comes when you have to type the destination into your GPS.

What spelling do you use?

Most towns seem to have at least two or more ways of spelling their name and that’s separate from the original Greek.

You often see one spelling going into a village and a different one on the way out.

Despite being such a large island, and the centre of the Minoans, one of the first high culture civilizations in Europe, I didn’t take a lot of snaps.

We were here to have rest from history, culture and photography.

 

Even if people forget my name, and they often do, they recognise the mo.

In Turkey a lot of men of my vintage and younger, sport a tache. They come in all shapes and sizes.

Here are a few examples.

The first was Hagia Sophia.

The current basilica of Hagia Sophia, built by Roman Emperor Justinian 1, was inaugurated in 537 and apart from a few changes, especially to the dome, is largely intact.

The emperor had building material brought from all over the empire, including Hellenistic columns from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

Now I know where they went.

It held the title for being the world’s largest cathedral for nearly 1,000 years and was a marvel of architecture and engineering.

Hagia Sophia was firstly a church, then a mosque and in 1935 was secularised, by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and is now a museum.

The signs of its transformation are everywhere.

The biggest problem with the ongoing restoration, is what part of history do they remove in order to reveal another?

In many ways Hagia Sophia symbolises Turkey and especially Istanbul, with a foot planted firmly in both the east and west.

Our final trip was up the Bosphorus, the famous stretch of water that divides Europe and Asia and is the lifeline to the Black Sea.

It’s the May Day long weekend and our boat was packed with tourists, all clutching maps, city guides and their well worn Turkish editions of Lonely Planet.

On the Bosphorus a long line of cargo ships headed north to the Black Sea in the morning and in the afternoon they swapped direction and sail south to Istanbul.

I don’t know if it was coincidence but that is the same trip we made.

Luckily it’s not holiday time yet so the streets were quiet.

We arranged with the local tourist office in Safranbolu to get a taxi, at a very special price, to take us to Amasra for the day. I wanted to get the best light while we were at the Black Sea, as the next day didn’t look too promising.

Safranbolu, despite being a world heritage site since 1994, is decidedly un-touristy, a bit like Amasra. English is hardly spoken and it’s difficult, but not impossible, to get a beer.

The souvenir shops sell items that cater to the Turkish tourists, like American Indian bow and arrow sets and very local arts and crafts.

And you hardly ever get asked to buy or try anything, apart from the Turkish Delight that is in abundance.

It’s this simplicity, along with the old Ottoman architecture, that makes Safranbolu such an interesting destination.

As well as the 19th century architecture there’s the Cinci Caravansary, built during the Ottoman period in 1645. It was a form of wayside inn or hotel for traders on the Silk Route. It’s still a hotel today and the rooms are open for you to view, that’s if they’re not occupied.

Everywhere you look in Safranbolu there’s history in the detail, and a few amusing sights as well.

So that’s a first.

On our ill-fated trip from Antalya to Göreme, where we nearly missed the bus, we met Dilaver at the bus station.

We met him again at our convenience stop during the middle of the night. He was on a different bus but traveling in the same direction.

We thought no more about this chance encounter until he turned up at our hotel in Göreme. He had tracked us down and wanted to have us back to his house, in the next village, for dinner on Wednesday.

Unfortunately we were due to leave on the Tuesday so we politely declined.

All this was communicated with his broken English and our non existent Turkish.

Not to be put off by this he decided to show us some of the sites that were off the tourist beat.

We went racing around the Cappadocian country side in his little Russian car, up and down dirt roads and reversing along major highways.

The communication between us was elementary and this was highlighted in a most unconventional way.

We told him we had visited Gallipoli and got into a discussion about how ferocious the fighting had been there.

He then produced a small service revolver and removed two bullets from the clip and touched them together.

We both immediately realised what he was demonstrating, recalling the story we had heard about bullets colliding mid air during the heat of the Gallipoli battle.

Now Dilaver is a Turkish policeman and one of the warmest, most welcoming people we have met.

We hope that any further brushes with the law will be equally rewarding.

The water and wind erosion that created the Fairy Chimneys out of compressed volcanic ash called tuffs, has also been the cause of their destruction.

The houses carved out of this soft rock in Pigeon Valley, have become so prone to collapse that people are no longer allowed to live there. Many of the entrances have been blocked and replaced with pigeon holes.

Then there’s the balloon rides over all these amazing rock formations. During the height of the tourist season as many as 100 balloons can be seen over the area at dawn.

We arrived in Göreme on the Friday of a long weekend, and so did everyone else.

Tour coaches lined the road outside every major attraction and there were long queues at every entrance.

Apart from the geography, Cappadocia has a rich history of Hittite an then Christian cultures.

Christianity came to this part of Turkey first. The faithful, fearing persecution from the Romans, were forced to build their churches and monasteries underground or in caves built into the soft volcanic rock.

For two days our guide, Ilkay, showed us these early Christian hiding places, plus some Hittite ones as well, and told us their history.

Because of the hordes of tourists we were only permitted three minutes in each of the most popular sites.

So that way we learnt all about Cappadocian history in three minute grabs.

But no matter how interested you are in history, after a while these ruins become just more piles of rubble, broken pillars and pediments.

This is where there is great value in a good guide.

A good guide helps you to see beyond the surface and makes you aware of the little things.

We had such a guide when we headed out of Antalya to Side, Aspendos, Perge and the Kursunlu Waterfall.

Ismet was knowledgeable about Turkish history, both old and new, and was anxious that we quiz him on any subject.

What made our day, clambering over more history, so insightful was his intimate knowledge of the details.

He showed us how the Romans constructed their columns, from the capital down, using iron rods and molten lead.

He explained, with diagrams drawn in the dirt, how the aqueducts could make water travel uphill.

However the highlight for me was a sign, carved in marble, lying near the Agora in Perge.

This butcher’s shop sign was about 1,800 years old but the simplicity of its design made it instantly recognisable.

It wasn’t all ruins as he did take us to the Roman theatre at Aspendos. This is the most complete structure of its type with an intact facade and colonnades.

Thanks Ismet.