Bulgaria

Rila Monastery

I think out of pure exhaustion, we booked five nights in Sofia (pronounced SO-FEE-YA, not as in Loren).  The train trip from Bucharest allowed for a little leisure, though the zig zag slow route took about three times longer than it would have to drive and we arrived in Sofia late at night.  Was smart to buy a big bucket of KFC in Bucharest, as it was pretty much breakfast, lunch and dinner that day.  This was our first American chain food of the trip.  Border formalities were handled at the first stop in Bulgaria and then we had an hour to kill, so I ran into town and grabbed some beer.

 Fortunately, we were about a 10 minute tram ride from the train station and were able to self check in to a nice apartment just a few minutes walk from the action (a long pedestrian only street).  We pretty much stayed in on day one and did nothing except find a popular local restaurant serving Bulgarian specialties (which was pretty much the same as much of the region, with some Greek and Turkish influences).  Bulgaria is incredibly cheap and yet another country where the less fortunate oldsters dream of those days under the Iron Curtain.

 We solved the dilemma of visiting two of the most popular tour sites/cities by renting a car for a day.  Was way easier than going to bus stations on the opposite ends of town and doing two day trips.  Sofia is a large city of about 1.5 million and parking is next to impossible, so we took the easy subway ride out to the airport, visited site #1, found a hotel in site #2 with free parking and then returned to Sofia for our final days there.  Yes, we burned an AirBnb night, but the convenience was well worth it.

The first site was the beautiful Rila Monastery, about 75 miles S of Sofia, but a two hour trip due to traffic and windy roads leading up to the monastery.  We timed things so we avoided the bulk of the tour buses while still leaving enough daylight to move onto the old city of Plovdiv.  The monastery was truly spectacular with some amazing artwork and a good museum reflecting the 700 year old history of the monastery and several of the old foundations still exist.  Best of all, perhaps, was our ability to move around at will without encountering the tour bus crowd.  Additionally, the monastery is located in a National Park, so the scenery outside was pretty spectacular.

We made the decision to drive onto Plovdiv without taking the advice of Google Maps.  Good decision as we passed through a lot of countryside and several ski resort towns, though as we approached Plovdiv, the traffic got a lot worse.  Bulgarians tend to be VERY aggressive drivers, the worst of whom drove Audis and Beemers which, to their thinking, give them full ownership of the road.  Glad I learned my driving chops in LA!

European Cultural Capital 2019

Plovdiv is yet another UNESCO historical site which was founded during Roman times and much of the old Roman ruins are both intact and being rehabbed.  After checking into our hotel, we had some amazing pizza, though we mis-calculated where Old Town was and were just outside of it.  The following day we decided to do a "free" walking tour which was super-interesting and supposedly run by a non-profit though, of course, it was proper to tip the guides.  We were able to walk the streets of old town and check out a lot of spectacular Roman ruins while getting some insight about what it was like to live in Plovdiv.  At one point, myself, the guide and another tourist got involved in a discussion of Scorcese and Tarantino much to the dismay of the others in the group but, hey, passion is passion and the guide had one-upped me by illegally torrenting Tarantino's latest which came out after we left.  After the tour we wandered about a bit then set off for the two hour drive back to the Sofia airport.

Old Town Plovdiv

Plovdiv Street Art

Our final day in Sofia was spent on yet another "free" walking tour.  This one wasn't nearly as interesting as Plovdiv since Sofia has, for the most part, chosen to ignore its Roman past and in some cases has simply destroyed old ruins as they build over them.  We strolled through a few churches then set off for a long walk to the "best" sushi restaurant in town.  It was pretty bad, despite Sofia's general proximity to the Aegean Sea.  The next day it would be back to the airport and off to Istanbul.

One thing that's bothered us through Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria is the number of people who still smoke and the lack of smoking bans in restaurants. This would not change in Turkey.  Oddly, only Turkey cracks the top ten in lung cancer rates.  Part of the problem is that cigarettes are incredibly cheap in each of the aforementioned countries.

St Sophia Replaced a Lenin Statue

Cathedral St Alexsandar Nevski Sofia