Bansko go in September winner who'd have thought not me not me we're Jordan and Emily in March
of 2022 we decided to quit our jobs and travel the world full time we've spent the last three
days in Sofia Bulgaria where we've seen some incredible sites and eaten delicious food but
yesterday we picked up a car from the airport and drove to the first stop on our Bulgarian road trip
We have woken up to chilly Misty Bansko let's go we've come here because it's a super popular
destination in Winter for skiing obviously it's not ski season yet but we're gonna go
explore the cute old town and then maybe go for a hike if the weather holds out
wow okay first impressions of this town immediately you can
smell like winter it sounds weird but you can smell the cool air and
fires like people having wood fires in their house the houses are so cute they look really like
I know they've got the stone on the bottom and the wood and
the cold today though so I think we need a coffee
first stop of the Bulgarian road trip but it's really pretty already
Theres heaps of co-working areas and a Nomad Festival every year it's such a ski
place though like it is a ski Town through and through we have views of the mountains in like
every background when it's not so foggy it feels like we've gone from Summer straight to Winter
feels like it's been instantly cold and I've got sick
we really didn't know what to expect when we picked Bansko first I thought
it was going to be summer and we're going to be hiking up Green Mountains and having
amazing views it's super overcast today but the Old Town very cool
again this city is full of surprises I don't know where we are right now but
it's a really beautiful garden with cats running around it's a Church? Monastery?
yeah it's a church that's got like a fortress wall around it I wonder how old this is plants
and the cats and there's like a little water river kind of here is running through it's really nice
okay now we're gonna find some breakfast and coffee
Apparently breakfast is really hard to get here we've tried like three or four
different places they serve coffee but no breakfast whatsoever that
last place we went into looked more like a bar but there was a guy who
was super nice and he gave us directions to what should be a good and open Bakery
oh my gosh really thought that was going to be the one apparently she did make some traditional
breakfasts but she'd sold out already so we might be going hungry I cannot believe how difficult
it is to find breakfast in Bansko I ended up just going to a supermarket we have a coffee
and a chocolate croissant not the healthiest it's the only option we have it's not even
that early it's like 10 a.m no it's like 11 now probably yeah 11 and nothing is serving
breakfast foods or croissants or banista or anything we could eat lucky the town's so cute
even though the breakfast was average the company and the views were awesome
the sun has come out so we are trying to get up the mountain as quickly as we can to try
and squeeze this hike in because I think it's going to rain later on the clouds have just
lifted over the mountain a little bit so you can almost hit the top of it we're not doing
the full hike today but there should be a nice easy one that we can get done before the rain
comes it's a half hour drive there and we should be able to stop at the oldest tree in Europe that
sounds crazy one of the oldest trees in the world one of the oldest trees in the world I read what
Drive is so pretty it's like the trees aren't just green yellow and red it's like bright
orange and bright yellow and bright green oh the contrast is insane and then we're one of like
five cars I think we've seen so far there is a gondola that takes you all the way up the mountain
but it's not running right now obviously it's the sort of season so we are doing the drive up Virhin
Mountain on the pirin mountain range to the Virhin Hut nice and confusing that's where all the hikes
start from it's so beautiful I can't get over the color look at that one tree has all three colors
whoa oh my gosh we saw the temperature gauge go down as we were in the car it dropped like seven
degrees coming up here it's six degrees now it's so pretty up here though it's trees and The Mists
on the mountains yeah and there's this really cool restaurant cabin and they've got smoke coming
out so there must be a fire inside it's really dramatic like it's a dramatic landscape up here
don't know if you can see how cold it is
whoa pretty cold you're a dragon yeah
this tree was germinated in 345 A.D which makes it over one and a half thousand years old
which makes it 1637 years old
that was an awesome little pit stop on one of the oldest trees in Europe now we're going
to one of the Huts in the mountains where a lot of the hikes start from
and I hope you see stuff that's just as pretty as what we've seen there's
supposed to be a lake obviously heaps more mountain scenery that little itty bitty hike
has got me so excited for this next one hour one we're driving further up into
the mountains to what is called Virhin Hut and from there it's like a half hour walk to a lake
where this hike starts but none of the signs are in English and
none of them say what we assume it should say so fingers crossed
definitely don't have the right shoes for this
there's about 10 hiking trails that all leave from that Hut
and we picked the easiest one obviously trying to avoid the rain
but we are in the clouds right now trying to find a lake and I can definitely hear
a waterfall so I'd say we're on the right path it's marked by these little markers which is nice
yeah this has to be like
thank you should be just up here
we made it we made it it is gorgeous quite uh steep but short hike yeah like it's still
a bit of a challenge it's not like an easy one I wouldn't say it's easy yeah I think
because it's like been rainy and it's wet all the mud's really slippy as well it's very
peaceful the water is so Crystal Clear and the reflection of all the view around it so pretty
We passed like this wooden Hut for the fireplace looked like
they serve beers so we're gonna see if we can get one on the way back
to be honest that Lake was super pretty and really should have been very peaceful but
there was one really loud really obnoxious family there like fully yelling kinda took
away from the Tranquil nature vibe that we should have been oh well still glad we came
oh the second I look away
how do you say thank you
thankfully we have enough money that we're getting fries with cheese and we got two
beers which they're keeping cold by like the mountain river water outside it's just like
running through and the beers and the drinks are all placed inside it's so cool I love this
place and we'll come inside it's so toasty warm because there's a fire going like a proper wood
fire this is so nice what a finish to advance go the rest of Bulgaria has a lot to live up to