Tuesday, 1st August, Plovdiv

Yesterday evening we explored the town a little but I was too tired from surfing to write any more. The hotel is a large, modern building with more construction going on  behind it – which is inaudible thanks to height and modern windows. Down at ground floor level there is a conference centre and an as yet unoccupied shopping mall. Our room looks out over the River Maritsa towards the old town and a new bridge on the right hand side of the hotel that makes the crossing easy. The bridge itself is really a shopping mall, making use of the heavy pedestrian traffic.

This is a revival of a tradition of covered, commercial bridges that used to be found in Paris, London and Florence. Off to the left of the bridge is the 15th-century Imaret Mosque, one of the oldest Moslem structures in Bulgaria. Going up the hill to the pedestrian zone we come to the Djumaya Mosque, also from the 15th century, with murals inside and a minaret decorated with a criss-cross, fish-net pattern. It was round the corner from the mosque that we found an internet café, Café Zeon, probably the strangest one we’ve ever been in. It is housed in a concrete box which is strangely suspended in the air about 15 feet below pavement level. The staircase leading down to it is outside and what you descend into is a small Roman amphitheatre. It’s very science fiction-like, equipped with extremely fast computers and hotter than hell down there, a bit like a Turkish bath with electronic battle noises. A crash training course in ‘extreme’ research, or a new category for the next Olympics—sauna surfing—perhaps?