South of Veliko Tarnovo Travel Video Guide

South of Veliko Tarnovo Travel Itinerary

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The mill town of Gabrovo is the main urban centre south of Tarnovo, although it's in the smaller towns and villages, where rural architecture and crafts have been best preserved - notably Tryavna, Bozhentsi and the museum-village of Etara - that the main attractions lie. Several historic monasteries , such as Kilifarevo, Dryanovo and Sokolski, are within easy striking distance of these places. Veliko Tarnovo, Gabrovo and Tryavna are equally convenient as bases from which to explore the region, and even if you're reliant on public transport you'll find that you can reach several destinations in the space of one day-trip. Both Dryanovo and Tryavna are linked directly to Veliko Tarnovo by train, although continuing to Gabrovo involves a change at Tsareva Livada. Buses, too, are plentiful, with hourly services linking the area's major towns. Less well served by public transport are the little-visited monasteries near the historic town of Elena to the southeast, although together they form an easily digestible cluster of rustic sights to those with access to a car.

Travelling onwards to the Valley of the Roses from here involves two of Bulgaria's most scenic

mountain routes. The Veliko Tarnovo-Tryavna rail-line winds its way southwards through the densely wooded Tryavna Pass (where Petar and Asen defeated the Byzantine army in 1190, preserving the independence of the Second Kingdom), before joining the Sofia-Burgas line at Dabovo. If travelling by road, the E85 heads towards the impressive Shipka Pass just above Gabrovo (the place to catch buses over the pass), then drops down towards Bulgaria's "rose capital", Kazanlak.

Your Tips For South of Veliko Tarnovo

• Black Sea Coast Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  The Bulgarian Black Sea coast has quietened down a bit since its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, when it served as the playground for the entire Eastern bloc, but it is still a magnet for hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians and foreign visitors. - Bulgaria
  

• Southwest Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  The landscape of Bulgaria south of the capital is dominated by the River Struma, which rises on the southern slopes of Mt Vitosha before sweeping west then south through a series of arid gorges and fertile flood plains. - Bulgaria
  

• Kazanlak Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  Forty kilometres beyond Kalofer, KAZANLAK is the capital of the rose-growing region, although you wouldn't necessarily realize that unless you pass through town during the first weekend of June, when the long-standing but fairly lacklustre Festival of Roses ( Praznik na Rozata ) takes place. - Bulgaria
  

• Sredna Gora Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  ? So, proudly you may gaze Unto the Sredna Gora, the forest's single queen, And hear the ring of swords, and all this song can mean ? - Pencho Slaveykov, The Song of the Blood The Sredna Gora or "Central Highlands" stretch from the Pancharevo defile outside Sofia almost as far as Yambol on the Thracian plain. - Bulgaria
  

• Shipka Pass Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  For drama and majestic vistas, few routes in Bulgaria match crossing the SHIPKA PASS . - Bulgaria
  

• Balkan Range Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  The Balkan Range cuts right across the country, a forbidding swathe of rock known to the Bulgarians as the Stara planina - the "Old Mountains". - Bulgaria
  

• Plovdiv Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  Lucian the Greek called PLOVDIV "the biggest and most beautiful of all towns" in Thrace; he might have added "and Bulgaria", for the country's second-largest city (with a population of 360,000) is one of its most attractive and vibrant centres, with arguably more to recommend it than Sofia, which the proud locals tend to regard with some disdain. - Bulgaria
  

• Stara Zagora Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  STARA ZAGORA means "Old Town Behind the Mountain", an apt name for this settlement on the far flanks of the eastern Sredna Gora, with a history of occupation stretching back some 7000 years. - Bulgaria
  

• Sofia Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  According to its motto, SOFIA "grows but does not age" ( raste no ne staree ): a tribute to the mushrooming suburbs occupied by one-tenth of Bulgaria's population, and a cryptic reference to its ancient origins. - Bulgaria
  

• Rhodopes Bulgaria Travel Videos
  Bulgaria Travel Itinerary
  According to Thracian mythology, the mortal lovers Hem and Rhodopis dared call themselves after the divine Zeus and Hera, who duly punished the couple by turning them into mountains separated by the River Maritsa - him the Balkans and she the Rhodopes . - Bulgaria