Leaving flooded Venice behind, we flew to Sofia, Bulgaria to see Jeff, Sherry and the boys. While we were there, we left the kids with a sitter and had an adults only trip to the smallest town in Bulgaria, Melnik. Melnik is also known for its production of the type of wine that bears its name.
Before checking into our hotel, we drove up to a local monastery and took a quick look around. The gardens were beautiful:
And the views of the sandstone cliffs were excellent:
Once we'd checked into our hotel in Melnik, we began the wine cave crawl. First stop was literally a cave, complete with bats. We ducked the bats and enjoyed a pitcher of the "Six Fingers" family wine. The guy who owns the vinyard does, indeed, have six fingers. For a total of eleven.
The hotel used to be a favorite stop for the Communist Party leaders, and the room we stayed in was said to be reserved for the area Party chairman. The room was absolutely huge, with a king bed, sofa and two chairs, and a bathroom bigger than most European hotel rooms we've stayed in. It had one drawback: there was a party going on downstairs. Right under our room. Until about 2:00 a.m. Actually, we'd had enough wine that we didn't even hear it and went right to sleep. The hotel had a room that contained lots of Party memorabilia. Gordon borrowed a hat and made a new friend:
Here's the view of Melnik from our hotel room window.
Melnik wine salesman/guard...
When we arrived back in Sofia, we took the kids to the park, and the Big Brain worked hard to convince Leo (age four) that jumping on the trampolines would be fun. Much to our surprise, he decided to try it and had a ball. Wanted to go back the next day and do it again!
Here's three generations: Gordon, Jeff, Leo, Isaac, and Bruno the dog in a typical pose...
Jeff and Sherry, holding up well in Bulgaria:
