After some cheap but tasty soups in a students' place, my CS host Vladi showed me around the whole city. Except from the fully renovated and therefore a bit artificial main pedestrian shopping street, I immediately fell in love with the city center, or more precisely the artsy part of it, called Kabata. Hipster shops and cafés everywhere! Also, there would be a street festival in the next days, so everyone was outside and preparing some extras in front of their shops or decorating the street with little flags.
We went on to see the Old City, which is located east of the center on a small hill. People still live there, but compared to the rest of the city it was rather empty, except for the obligatory stray cats of course. There was lots of museums in old houses, for which I didn't have time and motivation though, so we just continued until we reached the peak overlooking the city. There was quite a few other hills surrounding/incorporated into the city, one of them with a very impressive monument on it - unfortunately I didn't have the time to climb them.
If you think this was it, you are totally mistaken. The by far most impressive and surprising part of Plovdiv were the remainings of ancient buildings scattered all over the city. For example, a Roman arena of 124 meters length (or so) was partly excavated where the main shopping street is today. In the ancient amphitheater nowadays operas and concerts are performed. Sounds crazy? It is!
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