My visit to village Ribaritsa was the end of a great trip that we did with my friends in July in the Teteven Balkan.
With our backpacks on our shoulders, we entered the village in the afternoon after descending from the Vezhen hut through the beautiful Tsarichina reserve. This trip here.
I walked around with excitement and curiosity because more than 18 years ago I had visited the village with my parents and my children who were still very young at the time.
I wondered what memories the places around me would evoke, how much the environment would be changed.
Everything was different: the houses, the trees, the sidewalks, the shops. But the long main street of the village, which seemed to have no end and which is one of the reasons why Ribaritsa claims to be one of the three longest villages in Bulgaria, was there.
We were moving pretty fast, but I was still looking with interest and trying to remember.
The houses of the village were neat, beautiful and renovated. Most of them were offered for overnight stays and the owners had gone to great lengths to provide plenty of amenities for their guests.
There were large well-kept yards.
In this yard there was a tree on top of which a nest was built.
In front of some of the houses homemade jam and honey were sold, in others there were handmade ceramics.
Small chapels carefully decorated with icons and flowers were built between the houses on the street.
Among the houses there were also those that were abandoned. There were such buildings and shops.
One place I really liked was the rope bridge. I could not resist the temptation to walk along it, although for a while I lost my friends, who kept on hurrying.
I managed to catch up with them at the center where they went into the local store and I continued walking and looking at the park, the town hall, the stone water fountain.
There were monuments along the way and I remember some of them.
The road that leads to the historical area of Kostina.
A monument to Georgi Benkovski, the leader of the April Uprising, was erected at this place. The road leads to the place where the Bulgarian revolutionary was killed.
More info here.
So I reached a very interesting place where my family and I had dinner before many years ago and it is a restaurant made in an train car. Years ago, the restaurant was functioning and it was full of customers.
Now the place was abandoned and only the view of the river and its noise were the same.
I am glad to have visited again after so many years this charming mountain village located around the waters of the river Beli vit. The tour was exciting, I hope you found it interesting too.
Thank you for stopping by!
