Day 32: Tue 28 Jun - Ruse to Tutrakan

Ride: 64km

Weather: cloudy but fine

Last night's dinner was taken at the nicest restaurant thus far. It was in a quiet back street that we had stumbled across during a walk. The setting was a simple garden design with stylish wooden furniture and big colourful umbrellas. The restaurant building itself was an old mansion. Throw in tasteful lighting and you have an ideal setting for dinner. We ate outside on a perfect night. The traditional Bulgarian lamb dish was very tasty as was everything else.

On the road again. Once we had found the way around two parallel one-way streets going in the same direction, we made short work of the ride today. It was on a smooth road with a healthy tailwind.  Hardly a hill to be seen anywhere so the average speed was 18km/h.

Riding the 60km was the easy part today. We then spent the good part of 2 hours looking for our accommodation. It turned out to be a "closed" guesthouse we had ridden past when we first arrived. It's actually an old house which they only open when required. The lack of any signage in these countries is just astounding. Do they really want tourists to find them?  

The neighborhood we are staying in is a historical area on the Danube of great significance to the local fishermen. This stretch of the river has been an excellent fishing area since the 13th century. The old houses date back to those times and in the main are falling down. You can see some evidence of restoration, but it's more a case of knock them down and rebuild in the style. The original buildings look very fragile. 

We had dinner in the same area, at the motel we couldn't get rooms. Hard to understand why as we were the only patrons in their restaurant and there were certainly no hotel guests in evidence. The meals were absolutely superb and the Cab Sav was the best we've tasted on tour.  The pancakes were not too shabby either.

Despite the relatively short day it was an early night for us all.  It appears that the rest days did most of us more harm than good. Once the body gets used to riding every day it doesn't like to stop. Kev left us today to return to Oz for personal reasons, we’ll miss him.