Tea and Cakes

This, my friends, is the best ice-cream you’ll find.

To find it you need to fly to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, get a bus for 2 hours to Plovdiv, and take a walk down the main shopping street, past the roman ruins, past the on-street cafes, until you come to the small ice cream stand just before the main square with the post office on it.

Then take your pick from the selection there. I recommend two scoops, although scoops implies a carefully measured small portion, and in reality it’s a giant spoonful or two in a massive sugar cone. Add your choice of sprinkles, and you’re off. The cost is calculated by weight, and the above ice-cream cost a bit less than €2. Yes, you read that correctly.

I tried a selection of flavours, some mine, some a sample from my companions, all of which were excellent and obviously made from what they claimed to be made from: Cherry – Mmmmm, Strawberry – Mmmmm, Vanilla chocolate – Mmmmmmmm. Above you see hazlenut, which was the nuttiest most delicious nutty ice-cream I’ve ever had, with chunks of praline chocolate in for good luck, and the one I came back to time and time again: Coffee and Whiskey flavour. Oh boy. This tasted like it had a generous slug of both in it and was top. Just wonderful.

It’s a good thing I was eating salads most of the rest of the time, I had a giant ice-cream each of the 4 nights I was in Plovdiv. I’d do it again too.

Cornwall was lovely.

I’d been down there twice before, once as a sulky teenager on a family break in Mevagissy, and once on a geology field trip.

The family holiday I remember very little of. I suspect this is because I was stroppy and sulky and antisocial and generally horrible to be around and I’ve blocked the whole thing from memory.

The a level geology field trip was mainly spent on beaches in the rain, mapping the layers and taking notes on the folds, or down mines. Actually, it was probably only one mine, but quite frankly that’s enough.

This trip was different. This was a few days relaxing by ourselves as a treat after lots of rushing around.

We stayed in Lostwithiel, a lovely little village with a pretty river to walk along and a surfeit of delicious places to eat. With only 2 full days we had to be selective about what we did, and I’m very happy with our choices.

We spent a day at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which were beautiful and fascinating and I can’t recommend them enough as a day out. I’m halfway through the book written about the history of the gardens and their restoration and it’s really interesting.

The Jungle

Mud Maid

Giant Head

Our second day we decided to spend exploring some of Cornwall, ignoring the pull of the nearby Eden Project.

We started off in the little port of Mevagissey for a walk up above the harbour and to see if we could find where Merry lived.*

Then we headed off to just outside of Fowey, for a hike along the cliffs by Menabilly, the house that Daphne du Maurier lived in for a while, down and around to Coombe Farm.

Coombe Haven, a smugglers cove that I have no photos of because as we walked by it was playing host to a naked elderly man stood up to his knees in the sea.

While in Mevagissey we’d cunningly bought our lunch: pasties.

Cheese and onion pasty, and a chick pea and cumin one that was delicious. I now want to make everything into pasties.

After our big long walk it was time for a treat, so we headed into Fowey for high tea:

The Dwelling House is a grade 2 listed property, and serve absolutely fabulous teas and cakes. High tea in the garden was a delight.

I think next time we visit Cornwall we’ll be heading back there. I may have to diet first.

*Mevagissey is the model for Trewissick in The Dark is Rising books by Susan Cooper.

Cornwall is trying to kill me with delicious food.

Today we started off with breakfast at Muffins, an award winning tea shop.

Cornish tea (yes, grown in Cornwall), fruit with local yoghurt and museli, followed by fresh granary toast with local orange marmalade.

We spent the day at the absolutely wonderful Lost Gardens of Heligan, where I had a roll with Cornish brie and cranberry sauce followed by a fresh cream lemon cake.

Then a snack of vegetable crisps and organic St Clements (lightly sparkling orange and lemon juice drink).

Back to Lostwithiel in the evening, to Trewithen Restaurant, for one of the best meals I’ve had in ages. I can barely move right now, but I just couldn’t stop.
Parmesan and herb bread, and olive bread as a pre-starter.
Pea, spring onion and pesto risotto with parmesan shavings to start.
Red and yellow pepper tarte tartin with chilli and mango as a main, served with fresh steamed vegetables, new potatoes and potatoes dauphinause (yeah, I cant spell that.)
Then strawberries and champagne sorbet almost to finish.
I say almost because our enormous pot of great coffee was served with home made petit fours.
An awesome meal, in a lovely location, with great service.

Everywhere we’ve been, on top of all the delicious food (actual choices for vegetarians!), everyone has been super friendly and nice and helpful.

I don’t think I need to eat at all tomorrow.

I had a flying visit to Bulgaria last week, and it was really interesting and challenging and lots of fun.

We flew out really, really early on Thursday morning. That time of day should not exist.
My journey: Taxi to airport – fly to Frankfurt – fly to Sofia – taxi to city centre – bus to Plovdiv – lift to hotel

Our taxi from Sofia airport to the bus station in the city centre cost twice what it should have, and twice what it cost on the way back. I think we were brought around the city a bit, while the driver tried to convince us that we should pay him to take us all the way to Plovdiv. Nothing that we could do though, and at the end of the day it meant a €10 taxi ride rather than a €5 one, and my taxi out to Dublin airport that took the same length of time had been €30, so it’s hard to get too upset about it.

Buying bus tickets, finding our way around, everything really, was a bit tough. The alphabet is Cyrillic rather than Roman so it’s really difficult to read, and I just couldn’t get to grips with Bulgarian. Most people were friendly though, and between their smatterings of English, French and German we got by.

Plovdiv is a lovely city. It’s about 2 hours by bus from Sofia, and is the second largest city in Bulgaria. Everything felt and looked really run down, with lots of communist-era apartment blocks. However, there was no litter on the streets, and although the buildings were run down they weren’t vandalised, and there were loads of trees and lots of greenery everywhere. The city felt safe.

The Old Town was interesting to walk around, although we didn’t have a huge amount of time for exploring. (It was a working trip). The city was founded by Alexander the Great’s dad, so is very old. There are Roman ruins dotted around the place, and an amphitheatre in the Old Town.

All round the residential parts of the city were play areas – playgrounds, basketball courts and the like. Mostly a bit overgrown, but attractive in their way.

Yes, those are rocks taking the place of the net, and yes, it does get used – we saw kids playing table tennis there earlier in the day.

I had been a bit worried about food for me, being vegetarian and not liking eggs, but I ate really well – heaps of salads and delicious vegetables. The coffee was mixed, but I realised that it was partly due to the preponderance of UHT milk, so stuck to espresso and Viennese coffee and it was top notch.

Cake wise, I did well. I wasn’t there for long, and was too full of salad and fruit most of the time, but did sample a giant portion of apple pie in Sofia along with my knitting on World Wide Knit in Public Day on my way back to Dublin.

Bargain apple pie: €2.00!

The weather was fabulous – really hot, which caused the noisiest thunderstorms I’ve experienced in a long time. I had a great view from the hotel window.

Saturday morning we got up early, had a quick breakfast outside (Outside! In the sun!), took a taxi to the bus station, the bus to Sofia, had lunch in Sofia, took a taxi to the airport, flew to Frankfurt, flew to Dublin, and was collected from the airport and brought home.

All in all it was a lovely little trip. I’m looking forward to heading back there in August. Need to brush up on my cyrillic before then.

As you may have gathered from my previous posts, I was up in Belfast this weekend. It was for Sara’s hen party, and little miss smarts here forgot that the location was supposed to be a secret, and posted here on the blog about it for Sara to see. And I think I probably let it slip before then too. Well done, me.

I went up on Friday afternoon by myself, and had a relaxing evening wandering around the city before a swim and an early night at the hotel, which was just what I needed after a long couple of weeks.

I’m still not completely sure what I think of Belfast – it was strange seeing Dunnes Stores right next to BHS, and O’Briens Sandwich Bar right by the City Hall with the statue of Queen Victoria in front of it.

Saturday morning I did much the same – a wander and then a sit for a nice pot of tea in the Linenhall Library. I forgot to document it, but my teapot totally looked like it was the sort to spill tea all over the table, but turned out to be a perfect pourer.

At lunchtime I met up with Diane and then the rest of the group, and we headed out for a delicious lunch, then back to the hotel, off to the Belfast Wheel,

and then on for cocktails, a delicious dinner, and then the rest of the night!

Sunday we went out for breakfast and a quick spot of shopping before heading back down to Dublin.

Sara’s sisters did a wonderful job of organising everything, and it was a lovely weekend.

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Side note about knitting:

I picked up the boyfriend sweater again to find that I really don’t have that much more to do, so I’ve been working on it over the last couple of nights. It’s dark here, and it’s not easy to photograph anyway, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s looking great, fits well so far, and doesn’t have too much further to go. (The neck looks a bit small here but that’s only because the stitches are all bunched up on a 40cm needle.)

In Belfast I also cast on for Cozy from Knitty in a 4 ply cashmere yarn. I wanted a soft, light, warm wrap that I could use as a sort of small blanket on aeroplanes and also squish up around my neck as a scarf, and I think this is going to do just the job, although it’s hard to tell at the moment:

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Now, after a weekend away, preceded by a full weekend of work, 3 weekends of guests, and a different weekend away, I’m quite looking forward to spending the bank holiday weekend at home. Although maybe there are some last minute deals out there…