b'Spectacular views from the seven hills surrounding Plovdiv.Bulgaria(continued from page 55)Romani, which is based on Sanskrit, the classical lan-guage of India.Exploring history is one of my favourite things to do, and I came upon a fortress built in 1185. Tsarevets is a medieval stronghold located on a hill in northern Bulgaria. It was a great amount of walking, but exploring this well maintained fortified church, is definitely worth the visit.The Rila Monastery is the largest Orthodox monas-tery in Bulgaria and was built in the 10th century. Mon-asteries in the region are home to nuns, not monks, as one would expect.The Rila Monastery is regarded as one of Bulgarias most important cultural, historical and architectural monuments, and is a key tourist attraction for both Bulgaria and Southern Europe. In 2018 alone,Beautiful Rila Monastery is the largest Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria.it attracted 1,000,000 visitors, and is depicted on the re-verse of the 1 lev banknote. TRAVEL TIP:Most people think of Bulgaria as a beach paradise onOn June 12th China began limiting the number of visi-the Black Sea, which of course it is, but travel inland andtors to the Great Wall at its most touristy spot, Badaling, really get to see some interesting aspects of a beautifulto 60,000 people per day. Tickets are only available through country. Chinese speaking tour companies, and must be purchased 7 days in advance. Each ticket is for a specific time. FYI, 60,000 Jonathan van Bilsen is an award-winning photographer,people is also the number of visitors to Floridas Disney published author, columnist and keynote speaker.World every day. Follow his adventures at photosNtravel.comBucket list worthy . . .MCTICO #4577532158 Casimir St., Port Perry905-985-2268virginia.frew@marlintravel.ca56 FOCUS - OCTOBER 2019'