Bulgaria travelogue concluded

My wife looked at the first installment of my travelogue this morning and told me that I used to drive the same way I said our chauffeur drove, which is a real shame, given that, for rhetorical effect, I was exaggerating the way our chauffeur drove (we never actually got close enough for me to literally touch the vehicle we were passing; the vehicle would have had to slow down suddenly before we swerved to pass it in order for me to have had that opportunity).
    My wife told me that I used to drive that way in town, then, on the freeway, where the speed limit was of course much higher, I'd slow down.
    Well, you can never quite believe what a wife says about her husband's driving.

But she was right when she said that we'd told our son about our trip months before he started his Bulgaria blog. I was taking some license for the sake of the joke I was trying to concoct. In fact, our son is an extremely busy musician. What's amazing, actually, is that he was able to blog as much there for a few weeks as he did. We both hope that he'll soon find the time to continue.
    In fact, if he does, I'm sure that we'll find many more items to inspire us to visit Bulgaria again. As it is, we'll probably go back in 2014.

Anyway, here are the rest of the photographs of our trip that I plan to publish here, continuing with our stop in Nessebar on our drive from Balchik to Plovdiv on Friday, progressing to our visit to another botanical garden on Monday in Sofia, and concluding with our visit in Rila and Blagoevgrad on Tuesday.
    Of the places I've mentioned, either in the text or in captions, only Balchik, German, Nessebar, and Rila are so small that you may not be able to find them on the map I provided with the first installment. Balchik is on the coast north of Varna; German is a southern suburb of Sofia; Nessebar is a coastal island, or isthmus, south of Varna; and Rila is between Sofia and Blagoevgrad, a few miles north of the latter.

Thanks for their handy map
to whatever restaurant provided the flier

Nessebar's picturesque little harbor

I'm embarrassed not to be able to tell you what ancient ruin
this was (from quite a few hundred years ago),
on perhaps Nessebar's highest ground

A street in Nessebar, but not the one where the shop
was located from which my wife bought me a cap
(see later photo)

You know what a WC is; Nessebar was the best place we
visited for telling us where we could find one, except
that the local merchants seemed to use them as a decoy
to get you to walk by their store so they could accost you

A sign on the gate at the
University of Sofia Botanical Garden

More Tulips, not so brilliant as at Balchik,
but it was overcast in Sofia

We saw lots of wisteria in Bulgaria, none
finer than what was growing in the
University of Sofia Botanical Garden

Alexander Nevski Cathedral from the botanical garden
(see aerial photo below, though I didn't take it)

The University of Sofia Botanical Garden (upper left),
Alexander Nevski Cathedral (lower right)

A private garden in Rila; more Tulips!

A sheep herd in Rila
(i.e., sheep literally being herded along)

A goat herd in Rila

From the balcony of the suite we stayed in in Rila,
in a sort of private hotel belonging to a clothing designer
and manufacturer (and patron of the arts)

To the left of the photo above; the wooden structure
is a platform hanging over the river that runs
alongside the clothing factory and private hotel

My son photographed me standing on the platform;
I'm wearing the cap my wife bought me in Nessebar

My traveling companions to Rila and Blagoevgrad

To the right of the first photo of the garden below
our suite; we were too low, and the garden was too big
to capture in a single photograph

The side of the private hotel
and part of the garden from the ground
(possibly from the platform over the river; I can't remember)

The American University in Bulgaria, in Blagoevgrad;
 our son and daughter-in-law founded and sustain its
arts program; she plays solo harp for its commencements,
as she did most recently on May 15

The American University in Bulgaria, another view of
its main building, which belonged to the Communist Party
prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union
(the dog is asleep, not dead)

I would like to have taken many more photographs of our grandson, but I failed to plan ahead and carry along another battery for my wife's camera. I got one fairly good photo of him during our first visit, but the camera was being recharged each time after that.
    We were sorry to have to leave Bulgaria and return home so soon. What a lovely country, what striking contrasts of modern and ancient!