Summer on the pistes

We decided to head to Bulgaria for the weekend. My husband, daughters, family and friends have all been ski-ing in Bulgaria a few times which I mentioned in my blogpost Ski-ing in Macedonia and Mount Ponikva but we had never visited in the summer months and we guessed it was a good opportunity to escape the heat of Kocani and head to the cooler mountains.

We drove into the town of Borovets which was now drenched in sunshine instead of snow, there seemed to be quite  few tourists around and the restaurants were all sporting amazing hanging baskets filled with colourful petunia’s and geraniums.

The hotel was opulent grand and extensive. The entrance hall sported a shiny mahogany bar with golden taps, every drink on show that seemed possible, regimental glasses lined up and waiting to be filled, The only problem was that the entrance and the bar was totally deserted. In the 3 days that we stayed there we didn’t see it open once.

The entrance set a precedence for the rest of the hotel. We stepped into the lift which took us to the 6^th floor, well we hoped it would take us there, we were to find out that the lift went on a wing and a prayer, sometimes it stopped on the floor which corresponded with the number pressed in the lift, sometimes it stopped at a random floor. Sometimes it stopped between floors.

The bedroom was spacious with an absolutely amazing view across the mountains, and in fact the pistes and ski lift. We stepped out onto the balcony and stepped quite quickly back into the room. The balcony was on a slope – downwards, there were solid wood fencing around the balcony, or there had been once, now the panels were in desperate need of repair. We admired the absolutely stunning view from a distance.

The beds seemed to be missing legs, the bed and mattress was on the floor. At least you couldn’t fall out. Anyway, we were there for the walking we told ourselves not to spend time in the hotel.

The next day, after breakfast. I will spare you the details but a good breakfast if you don’t want to overeat, we headed off to the ski lift and took the cable car up the mountain. It was pretty busy, a lot of people going hiking, we also heard that there was an event in the village in the afternoon but although we asked a couple of people what it was about the answers were very vague and we were none the wiser.

We took the lift to the highest point, jumped out and were surrounded by amazing views from rugged mountainside to deep green conifers, on one side full sunshine and the other side worryingly dark clouds were forming, which way were they going to go we wondered. There was a cool breeze, it felt wonderfully refreshing, like a splash of ice cold water on your face after a long hot hike.

We walked around the top of the mountain, had some refreshments and planned our route. Now it was at this time that Johan thought it would be a good idea to ‘ walk down’  the ski slope!

The jury is still out on the question if that was a good idea, all I know is that the next day my thighs were reasonably certain that it wasn’t such a brilliant idea, even if we had breathtakingly amazing views on the way down!

Checking out the slope, green instead of white, it seemed surreal that in a few months time it will be full of people whizzing past on ski’s.