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Published: September 11th 2023
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With no real plans for today we decided on a walking tour of the city. A 10am start allowed us to have a lazy start to the day and still arrive outside the Palace of Justice with time to spare. Kris was our guide today. He is a native of Sofia who studied in Germany and then chose to come back to Sofia to live. Kris had a great knowledge of the city and to be honest by the end of the tour all of the fact and dates that get crammed into the two hours get muddled by the time it comes to writing the blog.
Some interesting facts that I can remember. As I mentioned yesterday, Sofia is the 3rd oldest capital city in Europe behind Rome and Athens, it's original name being Surdica. There are numerous Roman ruins about as the Romans presided over Bulgaria for a considerable period of time. Of the 4 city gates that existed at the time, none remain fully intact, but there are parts of 3 that remain. There is the remains of one tower in the basement of a private building that is open to the public for viewing.
After
the Romans it was the Ottermans that ruled over Bulgaria from Stampol (Constantinopal aka Istanbul). There is a square colloquially called Tolerance Square because within a 900 meter radius there is a Mosque, Othodox Church, Catholic Cathedral and Jewish Synagogue. In the late 19th and early 20th century Bulgaria was ruled by a monarchy. There was disquite from the far right (communists) at the time. The story goes that there was an attempted assassination of the King and a soldier threw himself in front of the King taking the bullet and dying in the process. A few days later, a second assassination attempt was being planned. The communist party had killed a general knowing that dignitaries and teh king would attend the funeral. They smuggled explosives into the roof of the church and shortly after the funeral began detonated the explosives killing 120 people and injuring 500. The King was unhurt as he was late for the funeral as he attended the funeral of the soldier who saved his life before going to the general's funeral thereby dying once, but saving the King's life twice in the process. In 1944 the communists took over Bulgaria and killed most of the
parliament in the process and ruled until the end of the cold war. Bulgaria is now an independent state with free elections and is a member nation of the EU.
We grabbed a bite to eat after the tour and then visited a few more sites around town before returning to our apartment to do some bile maintenance. Our next planned stop was Smolsko, 61kms away. Unfortunately we were unable to find any accommodation there for tomorrow and as it is quite remote there is nothing else in close proximity to it. We have made the decision to ride on to the next planned stop making tomorrow a big day of just over 100kms with 3 significant climbs. Not something any of us are relishing but we don't have much of an option. It will be an early start and an afternoon finish. The forecast is for 29C but we are travelling between 400 and 800 meters so it does feel a bit cooler.
Distance travelled today: 0kms
Distance travelled so far: Same as yesterday
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Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0501s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb