Unless they are mortared in, any type of paver will offer a permeable surface. The tighter the joints, the slower the permeability/water percolation, but it will still exist. And laying pavers is a very DIY'able project :-) Mutual Materials is very good about providing very clear instructions for DIY'ers to follow. Cobblestone paving does not really lend itself to plantings in between the cobbles - they are too small and for the best appearance, they should be set very tightly. Works nicely with larger pavers or flagstones, however. But it is also very easy to keep the paver surface weed-free -- pressure washing, torching or using horticultural vinegar or other herbicides take care of the issue easily.

Josh, this was an above average income woman, in that she was the widow of a well-known author who wrote many books after the collapse of communism. Make no mistake: Bulgaria has a lot of history, but it's an entirely modern country. Nearly everybody has appliances... well some appliances, anyway. Every washing machine I saw was front-loading and in the kitchen. Nobody has dryers. Everybody has at least one balcony, and they line dry their clothes. This is true of both city and country folk. I didn't see a single dishwasher while I was there. Also, I experienced very little AC, which was uncomfortable only in that we were experiencing record highs (100+ F)... this accounts for us spending so much time in the (cooler!) mountains! Here's a picture of a backyard in the next city we went to. Notice the satellite dish? When we left Irena, she asked if we would copy our pics to CD and send it with Vesko on his next trip by. Concerned about compatible file formats, I asked (through my interpreter) if she wouldn't prefer prints. She laughed and said "No, I have a TV, a DVD player, a computer, and more. Your file formats won't be a problem." One last thing about Kovachevitsa, its designation makes its property very desirable... especially to people from other EU nations looking to snap up bargains. Irena told us property has been selling in this village at the heretofore unheard of rate of 1,000 Euros per square metre ($147 US per square foot?) Sometimes we change things the most when we try to keep things exactly as they were! After Kovachevitsa, we went to Leshten. Lots to see here. There are beautiful gardens attached to restaurants, and some very charming old buildings have been converted to hotels. There are only two official residents of Leshten. It was dark, but Vesko knocked on their gate and asked them to let us in to meet them. They were in the middle of milking their goats (!) but they obliged. She's 76 and he's 81. Five times they begged us to drink rakia with them, but we were reticent to continue our interruption so late at night. They could not have been friendlier or more charming. By this point I was understanding a surprising amount of what was being said. Certain phrases amused me though... One was "Dah Bah Dah" which was interjected quickly in a conversation when the listener agreed with the speaker ("Dah" means yes). To me, it always sounded like "Yabadaba-doo!" and would always make me giggle. Well Vesko had a surprise for us at the very top of this hill. He called it the "Yabadaba-doo house" for obvious reasons. Vesko found the power and we turned on the porch lights and enjoyed a fantastic view. He said he knew the owner and had always wanted to stay here (no one was when we were there). He said the house had satellite and wifi. I wondered why anyone would go to what seemed to me to be the end of the earth to plug in. We walked back to the car (much easier to negotiate those cobblestone hills when one is sober and wearing proper footwear) and drove back to our hotel in Ognoyanovo. We wanted to eat dinner on the patio by the pool, but there were no free tables, so Vesko got the waiters to carry an indoor table outside to accommodate us. Vesko had told us he had a surprise for us and asked us to wear our swimsuits and cover-ups to dinner. After dinner, he strapped a spelunking light to his head, took us off the hotel grounds, walked us across a narrow and precarious suspension bridge (daylight pics don't do it justice), and up the road for about five minutes to a geyser-fed hot spring mineral bath that's been operational since Roman times. The moon was bright and barely waning, the air was clean, cool and fresh, and the water was bath-tub warm. My friend is a very driven woman. She's a serious scientist with lots of business responsibilities... and we learned about then that she's also a hopeless "city girl." The whole way up she was terrified of encountering snakes or bears... and even frogs! After we had soaked for a good long time, we went back to the hotel grounds, sat in a circle, and drank Vesko's pear rakia until the call of sleep finally became louder than the chorus of crickets. Steve took these pics the next morning... they don't do the experience justice. And thus ended our fifth day, and second with Vesko...

Writersblock - They had some beautiful flowers at the hotels that we stayed and the tables at a lot of restaurants had fresh flowers. Outside in the streets there were flowering bulbs in boxes. The Cavalieri hotel had some beautiful orchids around the lobby together with the biggest collection of art of any hotel in the world, it took us at least an hour to see all the paintings and they gave us an audio guide. Cora - I don't know how it was 25 years ago, but things change and a big no, it is not like that today, public bathrooms charge you a fee to use them.-( Tom - Cheryl is back and she said that is going to snow next week, she had more time to visit wineries and other interesting places, we are going to look today at the pictures that she took. She bought some leather goods at the Florence market, the best place to shop for that. The last day at the hotel we looked at the prices for breakfast and had a lot of names on the menu that we did not recognize and the price was 200 euros, so we decided to have them packed a breakfast box from the free breakfast buffet to take it to the airport and it was good. Here are some of the things that she brought, pan forte is wrapped in paper like gifts and they told us that last at least 1 month. In fact anytime that you buy baked goods they wrap them nicely even with a gift string. Now that I am reusing the plastic bags I noticed that they are of a different stronger material. A lot of beans, dried fruit, chocolates, wine and cheese is in the fridge.:) Silvia

Mine also depends on the innards of the sandwich. I have not bought any kind of bread in many months now so I don't have any in the house. But my husband only wants Rye and he prefers Cobblestone Jewish Rye. If I am having something that I want nice soft fresh white bread for I love Evangeline Maid bread from Louisiana. Wish I could get it here. I love a fresh French loaf or po-boy bun. I like California Sour dough also for sandwiches. For a grainy bread I like wheat berry honey nut grainy bread. I do not like a really hard dry bread. I had a couple of bites of corn bread today that came with my lunch and it sure was good. I cut off a bite for me and gave the rest to my friend to add to her dinner doggie bag. Bread is one of my weaknesses so I just can not have it around me at all. The bread basket stays empty these days!