Enchantment of Eastern Europe

A cruise on the Eastern Danube

Vidin Bulgaria, Saturday May 25

We met for breakfast at 8 and were ready to board the bus for our tour at 9:30. Our guide was Sashka. She said the typical monthly salary is about €800. The Bulgarian way to say cheers is Nastrovia.

We passed a few interesting sites on the bus, but I never did get back to them.

⁃ Monument of the grieving warrior was built soldiers Serbian Bulgarian war

⁃ 1924 cathedral

Our first stop was at the Baba Vida Fortress. Legend says a Danubian Bulgarian king who ruled at Vidin had three daughters: Vida, Kula and Gamza. Vida was the one who took care of her family so they started to call her Grandma; hence the name Baba Vida.

We strolled past the rose garden, which smelled wonderful!

We walked by a flowering tree, called Catalpa. The flowers were beautiful! Here’s a picture from the internet of the amazing flowers.

One of the watchtowers was built by the Romans between the 1 to 10th century. It was interesting to walk around inside the fortress. In the 50s the fortress was designated as a historic monument.

Inside the fortress we saw a few rooms that presented information.

We left the fortress at 11:10 for a 20 minute drive to Dos Alamos Winery. The name is translated as two poplar trees. They are a husband and wife team, and produce about 400,000 bottles in a year which they export to many countries (not North America).

We were led downstairs to a very pretty setting for a wine tasting. We sampled their Sauvignon blanc, rosé from an indigenous grape (salmon fumeé), Ruby red wine from an indigenous grape, which spent 3 years in a barrel and 4 years in a bottle. They use Hungarian and French oak barrels. Finally our host had Dean open a barrel and we had turns to thieve a very tasty red straight from the barrel!

We were back on the ship for lunch and asked for the roof of the pool to be open. We spent a very lovely afternoon at the pool and the lovely waitress Eriska kept us stocked with beer. Jane and Scott from Florida, David and Chris from Dallas were our main company.