The OLDEST City in EUROPE | Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Good morning. Today we're going to show you around the oldest continuously inhabited city in all of Europe and one of the top 10 oldest cities in the entire world, Plovdiv, Bulgaria. It's the yellow one and you got to, yeah, there you go. Such a weird system. We got this, we got this. How old is Plovdiv, do you ask? 8,000 years. Okay, where next? Each bus ticket is one lev and you can easily pay with cash on the bus. Every single ticket booth that I've seen looks like this. It's like somebody went on a ticket booth smashing campaign and they were very successful. Plovdiv is named after the seven hills upon which it is built. Funny enough though, there's only six hills left. In the 19th and 20th centuries, one of the hills was quarried in order to pave the streets of Plovdiv. It's like, we're like, ah, we got seven of them, one of the six existing hills, the best one to get a panoramic view of the city. Never get used to this. I'm not sure this is the regular path to take up, but this is where our GPS brought us. So crazy. I feel like I'm on an ancient dig or something. You can see some of the six hills right across from here. The fortress on top of this hill dates back 6,000 years. It was one of the fortifications that protected Old Town down below. This is only part of what remains of the original city wall of Plovdiv. You can see Old Town from up here and that's where we're heading next. That is the heart of this city. I had read that walking through this Old Town is like walking through a history book. You'll find buildings and traces of nearly every historical period this city's been through and that's what makes it so unique and special. This is one of three original gates to Old Town and it's built upon an old Roman gate from the 13th century. It's a really good thing we don't have any money or room in our bags because we would go home with a lot of stuff. They have the coolest antique and thrift stores anywhere. He ain't lying. I already found a purse that I want. And I ignored it. Yeah you did. You completely ignored me. Something else that makes this Old Town incredibly unique is that it's mostly made up of museums and historic old houses so you have to take a day at least to go in the inside and learn the history and not just come here for the aesthetics on the outside. Now what kind of ancient city would this be if there weren't ruins to explore? This little section is one of the only visible parts that remains of the ancient stadium of Filippopolis. Back in its day it could seat 30,000 people. When you come down and see it you can see the old ancient wall that is also intertwined with the Roman stadium. Players of history. Although the stadium is Roman it wasn't rediscovered until 1923 so the Old Town had already built on top of it. It's really cool that they exposed certain sections so you can see it and still integrated it into the city. The stadium we just came from is right here. We are now continuing on the longest pedestrian zone in all of Europe. This is Plovdiv's main shopping street. It's 1,750 meters long. No vehicles, just shopping. You can still see fragments of the stadium all over Old Town. One of them is in the basement of this mall so we're gonna see if we can find it. We're in the middle of an H&M right now and it's five left to go down there and walk but you can see it from right here. Best shopping mall ever. Well that was interesting. We really don't like taking photos though unless you pay. You will get yelled at. Yeah I tried to get a photo on my phone and I couldn't but literally just the middle of an H&M. The strangest thing. You do not see that everywhere. Since we happen to be in the perfect place to do some shopping there are two things that we really need to get today. We need an extra external hard drive because we are running out of space and we need postcards for our patrons so those are the two things we're on the search for right now. The shopping street did not have what we were looking for so instead we're going to go to another neighborhood and get some lunch. It is the art neighborhood of Plovdiv. Back in the day this part of town thrived in crafts and trade. Think gold, iron, leather, and weaving. Today it is all about the artists and the cute little cafes. We really ought to know better by now but it's 11 30 and none of these cute restaurants or cafes are really open. Like you can get a coffee or a drink but you can't get food yet so I think we're gonna head out of the Kipana district and go somewhere else to try to get something to eat for lunch. Looking up food for Bulgaria was actually really exciting and fun because it's got the best combination of Greek, Turkish, and other Balkan food. Some of it originated here but they all just kind of share cuisine. Thank you very much. We each got a chicken durum for lunch and I got an ayran. The durums were four lev each. This particular fast food restaurant you ordered at a screen and then you give the ticket to the window, they make it, and hand it to you. The screen did not have any English on it so the guys next to us were like what do you want? Do you want a durum? Okay here you go. You want two small? Sure. Okay. Yep. Whatever. And so that's what we got. It all happened in about 15 seconds and I felt pressured. I was like I don't know what I want. Yeah I know. So I was like just give us a small sandwich or whatever I called it. So that's what we got. But they did take card which is very helpful because we don't like carrying around a lot of cash. Speaking of which, oh my fork just broke. Speaking of paying with cash, this entire city is mostly cash dominant so make sure you do have cash on you. Especially when you're getting on buses or just paying for anything really. Now that we've eaten and can think straight again, we've already seen the Filippopolis Stadium and now we are going to see the Filippopolis Theater. The rediscovery of this theater has a really interesting story. There is an entrance fee to see the theater but from what we've read you can see the entire thing from above for free. So that's what we're trying to do right now. This stadium is over 2,000 years old and it still hosts events. I had heard for as little as one euro at night time you can actually come and see like a night show of sorts. Something to keep your eye out for. The emperor's seat in the stadium was right above the entrance. He had his own little spot. Some of the facts in history that I find most fascinating is how stadiums and entire cities are just completely lost to time and then they're rediscovered and all the myths come to life basically. At some point during the last 2,000 years this theater actually completely disappeared and there's no definitive answer as to how it happened. According to my research here are the options. Fire, earthquake, mudslide, or Surprisingly Attila the Hun it seems to be the most favored choice. Essentially this theater may or may not have been destroyed via an attack from Attila the Hun back in 440 AD. This theater was only rediscovered as recently as 1972 because of a landslide. As they started clearing up the debris from the landslide they actually started tunneling through it and via that tunnel that's when they Finding any type of concrete information on this place was really difficult and if I am just completely wrong on any of the facts that I've provided please feel free to tell me and comment below. We would love to know the truth behind this place. I find it really interesting that you can probably pay for a slightly more expensive coffee or drink right above the stadium yet they put a bunch of advertisements right alongside the gate or the wall so you can't actually see down into it. And now we have one more hill to climb I think. And so it begins. I'm glad these are literally just hills and not hills that look like mountains. I am loving all of these hills. It doesn't take that much effort to get up here and you get another viewpoint. There's tons of them. There's the hill we started out this morning. There's the theater. The name of this hill which translates to the hill of the clock which is exactly why we're up here to see this. One of the oldest clocks in all of Europe. It was constructed by some Italian man back in about 1610. Oh it's locked. Look how tiny this is. I thought it was about to be open. Are we even going to see the clock? Trying to figure out how to see the actual clock face. Right now it just looks like a lighthouse. So this isn't even the original. I'll admit I'm slightly disappointed. It does still ring at noon and midnight every day. What the heck. I just shut the camera off and it just dinged one time. It's according to my watch 129. So I don't I don't know. This little adventure didn't turn out quite the way that we had hoped. If you don't know this area is known for their red wine production. So that is where we're off to next. I found a place called wine time and the owner immediately said sorry we don't have local wine. Oh okay. Well we went to this other place so I'm really happy he told us that. Okay cool. Do you want a menu for wines? Yeah we'd like Bulgarian. This communication. We did come down to this restaurant to order some Bulgarian wine. They did say so. I think I asked for red. I also thought he was going to bring us a menu but he brought us white. We're too shy to correct him so we're just gonna have to enjoy the white and maybe try red elsewhere. It's very good. I don't know if this comes with every order of a drink but he just brought us out some olives, some pickled peppers I think, and some nice toasted bread. We got one more glass because we wanted red. We ordered a red. Look at these glasses. Kind of big. I like them. Interesting. I will honestly say this is a little bit different than any other red I've had. Really? Yeah. Getting a hint of oak from the vineyard 100 miles west. It's a little sour. Kind of like tart. Not sweet. Not dry like you said. I don't know my wines. It's good. It's fine. Okay I'm just starting to realize this is a wine and tapas bar. We were also told before we came to Bulgaria that we'll love the food but the service might not be the greatest. We've had fantastic service the entire time we've been here. Everybody's been so nice. We were just brought some looks like turkey almost and pieces of bread with capers and some kind of sauce and pickled onion and I think this red wine is officially one of my favorites. Four glasses of wine and two free tapas was 25 luv. This is one big reason why we like traveling because we would never be able to afford to sit at a wine bar and have two glasses of wine each and have tapas. I can promise you I've never done that back in the United States. No. No. Ever. We wouldn't even go out for two beers. One maybe. One. Museums and historic old houses are not the only thing you'll find in Plovdiv. There are art galleries all over the place so if you like art this might be somewhere you want to come visit. We just stumbled down the street of crafts and it's right to the left of the old gate one of the old gates and this is like the narrow cobblestone streets that you would expect from an old town. It's a little after 5 p.m and we're gonna head to dinner so hopefully we have enough time to hike up another hill and catch the sunset. We walked past it. We're looking at this menu and like I said earlier Bulgaria has a really unique mix of Greek, Turkish, and the rest of the Balkan countries but check out this meat menu. Pork ears, duck hearts, veal kebabs, kebabs, breaded frog legs, frog legs and spicy sauce. There's some interesting stuff on this menu and just wait. That really does say bear but I don't think it's actually bear. We ordered stuffed mushrooms, stuffed grape leaves, tripe soup, and a Shapsuka salad. The one thing that we didn't order that I think you should and everybody else said we should is moussaka. It is Greek but there's a Bulgarian version. They just don't have it here. That was quick. Thank you. This is Bulgarian beer. I've had it twice now. It's not terrible but the wine was better. All of our food just came. This is our stuffed grape leaves, Shapsuka salad which is peppers and cucumbers and tomato with their brined white cheese and this is tripe soup. If you don't know, tripe is cow stomach. Just waiting on my stuffed mushrooms. I love mushrooms and onions and garlic. Those are like my three favorite food groups. I'm always surprised that the meat on the inside is really pink. It doesn't bother me. I just wonder why. Why is it pink? It's pretty good. Can I just try the broth first? Sure. It's not overly hot. There's anything. Surprising considering it's really orange. I think they may have heard me talking about the soup because all of a sudden she brought out some spices to spruce it up. There's a garlic and vinegar sauce and then just hot peppers but they do make a difference in the soup. Oh my goodness. These are gonna burn my mouth. This looks so good though. I don't know if baked mushrooms with cheese is typically Bulgarian but if Amber sees that on the menu she's gonna order it. So well that was cool. Half the reason we chose that restaurant was because we'd read that the bathroom door is basically the door that leads into a bomb shelter. So unique and so cool. It's set on the side of one of the six remaining hills and yeah there's like three big doors that you would have had to go to. Dinner was 34 lebs. I'm satisfied. Very. We have I think one or two more things to show you and then that's it. We might get ice cream but for now we're gonna go digest at a singing fountain. All right so they're not singing like I anticipated but that's okay it's beautiful and maybe we'll just get ice cream a little sooner. We don't have time for ice cream anymore but we do have time to catch the sunset if we hurry which is what we're trying to do. My phone shows a hiking logo at like an incline. You know that can't be good. We just pulled off on the side of the road. This is a little sketchy. We're barely gonna make it. Wow is this the right way? There's never a time to be murdered. Keep going. We really don't find the easiest route up that's for sure. I guarantee there is a perfectly paved path somewhere. Keep going. This is what I'm gonna call a google adventure because we're just following google maps and who knows where that's gonna take you. I can't fit under there. We're in the middle of Bulgaria. What the heck? Where is this woman taking me? Who did I marry? I don't know if I've explained this thoroughly enough but when it comes to path directions, Amber's great. Directions, driving, she's got it but when it comes to trails she can't do it. I had no problems. I'm agile. Anyways let's go. This will be a pretty good sunset. I got a pricker in my hand. Look it's beautiful. I think we're gonna make it. By the way we are currently hiking up to the top of which is the largest of the six hills and in the daytime there's a kid's little train car that you can ride and go around for like 50 cents. Google maps, it's not a good hiking part. We could have been on this path the entire time. This sunset's so nice we gotta go. We don't get to do this very often because not every city offers this. This was nice. We've enjoyed Plovdiv. This is where our Plovdiv video is going to end. Coming up we have one super fast night in Cyprus as we make our way into Armenia. After almost a year this is our last week in Europe and we're really excited to leave. This next month however is going to be very unplanned, edge of our seat, much faster than we've ever traveled before. I'm really excited to just kind of film and take you guys along for the ride instead of these very researched and planned videos. It's gonna be a lot of fun. There's just places coming up that information doesn't really exist and we're really looking forward to it but we're not sure what that's going to turn out for all of you guys when you see the video so bear with us and we'll figure it out together. 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