10th September Rila to Sandanski

Rila Monastery among the Rila Mountains

Painted frescoes

We woke early as we were heading to one of Bulgaria’s most popular tourist attractions Rila Monastery and we wanted to beat the crowds, thankfully it wasn’t too crowded as it was off season. The monastery is set among a large courtyard with 300 monks cells and was originally built in 927. Lonely planet were correct this time when they say the murals are Bulgaria’s finest, the nativity church contains 1,200 murals all brightly coloured , we spent an hour or so just sitting and taking in the various painted scenes. From here we headed to Macedonia we went through passport control and Cass was stamped out of Bulgaria (no need for Bek as EU) we then arrived at the Macedonian border control where we asked to purchase vehicle insurance as ours didn’t cover Macedonia. Bek left Cass with the camper and went to arrange the insurance, Bek was in the insurance office for about 30 minutes while the insurance man made various phone calls (seems they aren’t used to campervans) he then said the insurance would be 120 euros for two weeks. We initially decided to bite the bullet to save hassle even though we only planned to be in Macedonia for 4 days, when we went to pay the insurance with a credit card they said they didn’t accept cards and told Bek to get a taxi to the nearest ATM 8KM away and return. We felt we were open to a robbery by doing this and had a change of heart with paying 120e for 4 days so we decided to drive through Greece and enter Albania. This meant we had to drive back through the Bulgarian passport control who looked at us a bit oddly at first and asked if there was a problem in entering Macedonia, when we explained they were understanding and gave Cass another stamp in her passport.
That night we had dinner in another ‘ Happy’ restaurant which was near the Greek border, we slept in the restaurants car park (another night with a baby wipe wash) near to a very loud drunk couple who spent much of the night arguing and drinking Raki before passing out in their car.