Baba Vida
Tour of Vidin, Bulgaria (incl Baba Vida Fortification and wine tasting).
This is our last day in Bulgaria and I’m definitely sick. However, I’ll probably never be here again so I’m not about to miss seeing anything even if I don’t remember it too well afterwards.
I’ve taken a cold pill, the ship doctor gave me a shot and some more pills but probably the most effective medicine was the afternoon wine tasting. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We are in Vidin, Bulgaria, a town with a nice central park and a fortress called Baba Vida.
Trish exploring the fortress
The fortress dates from the 14th century but was built on the site of an earlier Roman fort. We climb around on the fort and get an awesome view of the town of Vidin and the Danube. There are few handrails or guardrails, plenty of opportunities to fall off the fort which gives a much better sense of the original building. It just feels dangerous – for defender or invader. A truly amazing string quartet plays for us on the fort battlements (which becomes a Venturi Tube forcing wind thru the performance). The quartet plays well but also has to chase their sheet music a few times – the rising wind seems appropriate with my cold-induced lightheadedness. The group walks to a local restaurant for a wine tasting – four different wines and my favorite is a dark red called Mavrud.
We walked thru town and tried an Internet Café one more time. It wasn’t too successful but I did get a photo of the two young men running the Café. By now all the shops had closed and the town center was almost deserted except for one wedding party driving around with horns honking and white balloons attached to all the cars.
My cold was winning the battle for whatever mind I had left so we went back to the ship for dinner and the 7 o’clock departure from Vidin.
