Weather today – Another picture-perfect day with a high in the low 80s F.

Vidin is in north-western Bulgaria, near the intersection of Danube River borders with Serbia and Romania. There are a choice of 3 Viking excursions today. The included excursion is Belogradchik Rocks and Fortress (4 hours, demanding, morning). One optional tour is Vidin Home-Hosted Cooking Demonstration (2.5 hours, easy, morning or afternoon) a home visit where you will “See how everyday Bulgarians live; learn how to prepare the nation’s beloved banitsa, and how the diet here helps some locals live to 100.”. Another optional excursion is the Baba Vida Fortress & Bulgarian Wine (3 hours, moderate, afternoon) excursion (shown as sold-out pre-trip).

We signed up for both the included morning tour and the afternoon Baba Vida Fortress & Bulgarian Wine tour.

Belogradchik Rocks and Fortress Excursion

The description for the Belogradchik Rocks excursion reads:

Journey into one of Bulgaria’s most scenic regions to see how geography helped create an architectural treasure.

Join your guide for a drive from Vidin to the Belogradchik Rocks. With their strange, red-hued cliffs and massifs, these stunning mountains strike a dramatic pose. The result of millennia of weathering, river erosion, freezing and countless other factors, these formations are more than Bulgaria’s great natural wonder. They are also a curiosity for the multitude of fantastic figures and profiles that emerge when you catch them at just the right angle. Silhouettes of people, towers, ships, mushrooms, palaces and animals populate the cliffs. You will also see the fascinating Belogradchik Fortress, built by the Ottomans in a maze of rock columns and pillars. Take a walk around the compound and enjoy superior views of the caves and rock shapes from its many terraced courtyards.

Although I had a good night’s sleep and woke up feeling okay, we decided to pass on the morning excursion and not push our luck on a “demanding” tour. Our new friends came through again with some pictures from this excursion for me to post. They didn’t think the main part of the tour was too demanding, but if you wanted to go to the top of the fortress, then they agreed that was more difficult with uneven terrain and some elevation gains for anyone with mobility issues.

I rested most of the morning, then got up (again), took a shower and went to lunch. We were both feeling well enough to go on the optional afternoon excursion we had booked.

Baba Vida Fortress & Bulgarian Wine Excursion

The description of the Baba Vida Fortress & Bulgarian Wine excursion reads:

Explore the wonderfully preserved Baba Vida fortress and sample a selection of Bulgarian wines at a local winery.

Meet your guide and embark on a scenic drive to Vidin’s most prominent landmark, the medieval Bada Vida fortress. Enjoy a guided visit of its defensive walls and towers and learn about its history as you tour the museum exhibits. Next, you will visit the Dos Alamos winery for a tour of the facility with an expert oenologist. See how the modern approach of wine production blends harmoniously with more than 200 years of family wine-making heritage during a tour of the lab and underground cellars. Afterward, you will sit down to sample a selection of fine wines accompanied by savory snacks, before returning to your awaiting ship.

We had a wonderful guide, Elbena, for this excursion. She is a Bulgarian teacher and writer and was quite witty and personable (as most good tour guides are!). Viking does a really good job of finding top guides in the regions they visit for their excursions. We enjoyed her narration providing an overview of her nation’s history and struggles, including perspectives on neighboring Balkan states.

Baba Vida Fortress Visit

The fortress is a medieval castle from the 10^th century built on Roman ruins and is the only entirely preserved medieval castle in Bulgaria. Over the centuries both Ottoman and Bulgarian construction can be seen in the walls of the fortress. The Ottomans used consistent layers of either brick or stone, while the Bulgarians used both brick and stone mixed within the same layers. You will be able to see all three construction types in the pictures (Roman, Ottoman, and Bulgarian). The fortress’s location on the Danube made it an important location for controlling the area leading to many sieges there.

Dos Alamos Winery Visit

Following our tour of the fortress, we loaded back on the bus to head through the countryside away from the river to the Dos Alamos Winery. Dos Alamos means Two Poplars. The Bulgarian language uses Cyrillic, and this is written as: Дос Аламос.

At the winery, we descended into the cellar where tables were set up for us with candlelight (also some electric light) and plates of food selected to enhance the wines we were to taste. The owner of the winery gave an excellent (and humorous) presentation of their growing and production processes as he explained each wine and the pairings. His presentation was enhanced with video slides and descriptions of local harvest customs and festivals. They poured three wines – a Sauvignon Blanc, a Rose Rubin, and a red Rubin. The Rubin is a dark-skinned grape created in 1944 in Bulgaria as a cross between the Nebbiolo and Syrah grapes. For the finale, the owner had us sample their Gamza wine from the barrel. The Gamza grape may be called Cadarca or Kadarka in other Balkan regions. It was my favorite of the four wines we tasted.

Then it was back on the bus for the drive back to the ship.

Evening on the Ullur

After freshening up, we headed to the Lounge for the evening port talk, then to dinner with two other couples traveling together whom Dave had met the day before. The six of us really enjoyed each other’s company and by the time we left the restaurant, only one other table remained occupied! Dave and I headed back to our room, so I could work on my blog and hopefully get a good night’s sleep as we get an extra hour moving from Eastern European time to Central European time tonight. The others planned to checkout George’s disco-themed set in the Lounge.

Passport Information

I mentioned in Note 65 that I was curious how our passports would be handled as we transited through Schengen and non-Schengen countries. When we boarded the first day, we were required to leave our passports with the Viking service desk as they would handle all the border passport checks on our behalf as sometimes this may occur in the middle of the night! For our days in Serbia (tomorrow and the next day), we are required to pick up our passport and carry it with us at all times while in Serbia, then return it so that Viking can have it processed when we exit Serbia and enter Croatia.