Plovdiv: Day 2 1/2

I suppose this is technically my third day in Plovdiv, given that I've paid for two beds so far. I've only slept in one of them, however, as last night I got to drinking with the two other guests here and the girl that runs the place. We were still going by 6am, and since I had to be on the internet at 8am so that I could kick my buddies' asses in our annual hockey draft, I decided to just stay up and push right through.

My host, Nailie (sp?), offered to let me nap for an hour while she made breakfast and coffee, so I did fall asleep briefly from 6:30 to 7:30, but I never took my pants or shirt off, so it counts as a nap rather than a sleep.

Today was a bit of a blur of more naps, a HUGE tasty lunch, the draft itself and a little more hazy wandering. It's about 6:30 now and I expect we'll be organizing a dinner outing pretty soon. I'm writing this posting up as I transfer another batch of photos from my camera onto the iPod. Not sure how many pics I've got so far, but it's a LOT. I mean, a ~L~O~T~. I'm going to have 3 days of editing to do when I get home!

So what else has gone on here? Well, after the evening that I described in the last posting, I spent an entire day going for a long walk through town. The highlight was a crazy huge concrete communist monument that was just way too cool/weird. Although the gates were locked, I was able to climb up one angled face and then down another into the middle of this structure. From there I snapped some way cool pictures of the full-on soviet-style statues that lined the interior of this place. I'm not going to do a full picture post here, but check this place out:



After that monument/hall, I kept wandering through a huge urban park, coming out (finally) at the canal that I had read about. It's a 2.5km long stretch of river that basically goes nowhere. God only knows what they were intending to use it for, but it's been turned into a rowing course, with a big stadium set up at one end to witness the finishes. Of course it's all fairly decrepit, but still cool. Evidently this canal was the last major communist make-work project in Bulgaria, so that was kind of cool to see. It really was quite immense, and must've been a huge undertaking.

Otherwise I've been chilling with Jann and Stephen, a french guy and american expat (now living in Buenos Aries). They're two real characters with a million and one stories to tell, so it's been pretty much nonstop since I sat down last night to hang out.

OK, go Bloody Knuckles! -my hockey pool team
and go Canucks! -my NHL team

Looking forward to coming home to watch some hockey. I got both Sedins in my pool this year, so here's hoping they take another step up. Wouldn't it be sweet if they both cracked 100 points! (that's sure to get a few comments from my buddies who read this!)

cheers,
bms