Predicted rain does come, but only after we’ve had a chance to wander round a bit more of the city. Discover lots of little shops, many with local arts and crafts and others regular small clothing stores, shoe stores, and corner shops. Quite a few bakeries and coffee shops. A surprising number of places are almost a cross between a kiosk and a corner shop. You can see the coffee, or pastries, or even bottles of liquor, through the window, but you can’t go inside. There’s a wicket where you ask for what you want and hand in your money, and your purchase is handed out to you - a bag of chips, a beer, a bottle of whisky, or whatever. There may or may not be a couple of tables with chairs on the sidewalk outside. Most likely to be if the shop is selling coffee, beer, or wine.
Decide to try one of the local rakias, feeling like kindergarten kids as we sound out the names. In theory rakia could be apricot or plum, but most are grape based. So here we are laboriously spelling oout words on the labels and hoping our Bulgarian is up to the challenge. A young man gives us advice. What we’d taken for an unfamiliar fruit turns out to be a grape variety, so that explains that. We’re slowly getting better at it, but it takes a while before ракия looks like rakia to us. Take a half litre home to sample.
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