Sunday, June 16, 2013

Hiking Seven Lakes (Bulgaria Highlight)

On Wednesday, I got back from a trip to Bulgaria to visit my dear sister Juliana. It was a great trip. I enjoyed seeing Juliana's life in Bulgaria, getting to meet some of her friends, and seeing a beautiful country I probably wouldn't have visited otherwise.


One of the highlights was a hike we took on my second day there. We went to a national park outside of Sofia where there is a cluster of seven scenic lakes that you can hike around. Juliana had heard it was beautiful and wanted to go, so I was up for it.


Getting there was a bit of an adventure. We took one bus from Sofia to a medium-sized town in the country. From there we took another bus which we barely caught which dropped us off at a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. We found a cab there which took us part way up the mountain.


There is a ski lift that runs in winter and later in the summer, but it wasn't running this early in the season. There were guys with jeeps giving people rides up to where the seven lakes trails start, but we hiked about two hours up to get to the starting point.


At the top, there's a "hut," which is really more of a lodge. We enjoyed a picnic lunch there, then began hiking around the seven lakes.


Because there was snow on some of the trails still, we couldn't get to all seven lakes, but we saw four and it was a beautiful hike. We had some rain at the end as we came down, but overall it was a nice day  to be out. We saw a number of other hikers too.


I enjoyed getting to see the beautiful nature Bulgaria has to offer and had a great time with my sister!


Even though we were hiking, we still observed some cultural differences. I don't think an American national park would have this prohibition:


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