Riding my bike in the pouring rain, I was recalling reading The Hobbit to Aaron as a little boy.  For those of you who are familiar with Mr Bilbo Baggins, the central Hobbit of this tale, you may recall that going on adventures was quite against the nature of Hobbits.  They preferred instead to stay warm, dry, comfortable and well-fed.  Bilbo said at the beginning of the book “We are plain quiet folk, and I have no use of adventures.  Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things.”  And later in the adventure:  “I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just starting to sing”  (JRR Tolkien).

Well, as always occurs at some point in our adventures, riding in rain, wind and cold several days in a row made me understand Bilbo’s feelings exactly.   Our entry into Bulgaria was wet and challenging.

As we came up to the border, it started to pour.  The border crossing was complicated by major construction on the bridge across the Danube (the river is the border).  Our fellow riders in the photo rode over the portion of the bridge that the traffic was using.

We crossed when the traffic was going the other way and so had to ride over on the construction site itself.  Yikes!  It was quite the dicey ride.    At least we were allowed through customs easily.

We stayed at a hotel that night on the river that would have been lovely      but for the incessant rain.

Thankfully, after one more day of riding in the rain, the weather changed and we are having lovely riding weather (Back to enjoying the adventure!!)
Bulgaria has been much prettier riding than I expected .  We spent one day in Veliko Tarnovo, an historic city on a deep river gorge .  It was the home of the Bulgarian Tsars back in the day.  We have had lots of climbing as we go through the hills/mountains in this region.  We still see many horse drawn carts.  I loved this sign that says bikes and horse carts are limited to daylight hours on this road  :-). 

It is hard to believe but we only have 4 days of riding left.  We have already gone almost 2000 miles.  My quadriceps are feeling the miles and especially the climbs.  Looking forward to a few days of luxury and sightseeing in Istanbul.  And then our own bed, shower & doggies!
We are in the border region close to Turkey.  We have been told we should have our passports and visas handy tomorrow as there are police patrols due to the increase in refugees trying to make into the EU.

Time to get some much needed sleep.  Will write again soon.