Thursday morning in Nesebar welcomed us with no water in the whole old city. This meant no morning shower, probably no breakfast with coffee anywhere.

But Nesebar still offered us something, I haven’t seen in two years – sunrise over the sea. I woke up Muh, so this time she wouldn’t miss it like last time at Eho hut.

At around 9 in the morning we were already on the road.

So we were in Varna pretty early in the morning, but that gave us the opportunity to walk a bit more around – we visited the Historical museum (with plenty of great history gathered in it, even though there were collections, which were not shown right now due to restoration), after that we got a great walk around the Sea garden. And then, of course a walk on the beach.

After Varna we decided to skip some of the objects for the day (like Pobiti kamani – Побити камъни). So we headed directly to Madara and the Madara rider – the national symbol of Bulgaria, and another UNESCO site. They say the rider in the rocks dates back to somewhere in the 8th century. It’s about 20 m above the ground and is I think in full size – a man on a horse, thrusting a spear in a lion, and around him a dog and an eagle. Some connect this to the thracians, some to the proto-bulgarians. I don’t really know, to be honest – but still, this is an impressive piece of art for that time.

We finished our day in the nice city of Shumen, where we slept in a hotel, which dated more than 150 years – the house in revival times belonged to a teacher from Shumen.