Day 4 – Friday 11th September 2015 – Sofia, Bulgaria

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Itinerary - Journey, by way of Nis, to the border and cross into Bulgaria continuing to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. Explore the city on an included sightseeing tour with a local guide, including highlights such as the Parliament building, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, St George Rotunda Church, National Theatre and St Sofia Church.

Wake up call… 6.30am
Bags out… 7.15am
Departure… 8am

Another nice and early wake up call for us all!! I’m starting to get used to these now. We packed out bags, and headed down for breakfast. I have no idea what happened during the night but I was eaten alive by mosquitos. Some of the guys thought it was spider bites and bed bugs… *shudders* either was it was not fun.

Anyway, headed down for breakfast and again it as very eastern European, there were sausages, goulashes but luckily there was also bread and their version of Nutella, Chipiripi. This is was white and milk chocolate spread.

The journey from the hotel to the border was beautiful. The scenery and the mountains through Nis were just so picturesque; I could help but just stare out of the window the whole way. When we got to the boarder the security guard came on board to take all of our passports. Successfully through the Serbian border we headed onto the Bulgarian boarder control. We all had to get off the coach again to be checked. As we walked through we were greeted by the Bulgarian border cat. He was super cute and came up to play with me. I was one of the first through the security so Ruth and I just sat there playing until everyone had passed.

We carried on driving to Sofia where we met our local guide, Nikolay. He stayed with us for a few days while we were in Bulgaria. We walked around the city centre and as you can imagine ABC (another bloody church) we seemed to be checking out a lot of churches and religious building on this tour. They are extremely beautiful but we did see A LOT!! Did quite a bit of walking, there were quite a few beggars on the streets as well, we all had to be very careful with our bags. After walking about we went to Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, this is a beautiful cathedral with a golden roof.

After walking around we all went back to the hotel to freshen up, it was a long day with lots of walking. Our dinner for tonight was in the hotel so we didn’t have to really get ready to go out.

For dinner we sat with Jayne, Steven, Mary, Chitra and Rosa, the usual crew. We had Chicken and Rice. I had to send my food back twice as it was raw. The bits I did eat were delicious. Today was Ethelind birthday so Ali had arranged for a birthday cake to be bought around to each table, it was really weird and had lots of biscuit layers. After dinner we all sat in the bar with Ali and Ethelind. The ladies ordered tea and Prosecco while Ethelind and I had mini pots of honey. They are a crazy bunch, can’t help but love them.

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Photos

Hotel Dinner
Rice and Chicken

Cakie
Ethelind's Birthday Cake