After our extreme adventure getting to Sofia we were happy to find our hostel and get settled in. We arrived late at night and then took it easy most of the next day. One of those laundry, blogging and recovering kinds of days. We went out for lunch at a kind of Italian-ish restaurant and were completely amused by the constant flow of weddings going on. I’m not sure what it was, but we must have been sitting outside a registry office or something because every ten minutes or so another wedding party would pull up with decorated cars and a big bridal party. They would go inside this shabby building for a few minutes, come back out and leave. This went on the whole time we were eating lunch (and in fact, we saw weddings going on all over the city the whole time we were there).

One of the many weddings we witnessed

It was quite an experience being in Sofia – they use a Cyrillic alphabet, but our map had the street names written in the Roman alphabet, so we couldn’t find ANYTHING.

Pretty useless map if you ask me!

EVERYTHING is in Cyrillic

People spoke a fair amount of English, enough that we didn’t really have problems, but it felt like a totally different world there. The city itself seemed to me to be pretty run down. In fact, it was the first place we’ve been where I found myself looking over my shoulder the whole time. Especially at night. After our day of relaxation we headed out to find some jazz. We walked a couple of blocks and I was just feeling creeped out. I can’t even say why, but I didn’t like the vibe. We couldn’t find the jazz even though I’m sure we walked right by it, so we had some food at a very strange place. It was like the Bulgarian interpretation of a Chilis or Applebees. The food was ok though and it was a really packed place right near the hostel.

Zagorka! Bulgarian Beer!

The next day was our sightseeing day. We took our bags to the bus station and left them in left luggage and then headed out on the handy-dandy tram. However, since we couldn’t read our map we wound up completely lost. Justin figured out where we were and we set off to see the sights.

We saw the statue of St. Sofia. Really nice, but in the middle of a construction zone.

Beautiful Statue

Not so beautiful surroundings

Lots of impressive buildings.

Lots of Lions in Sofia

The Sheraton

The old bath house

Funny lifeguard huts that were at a bunch of the intersections in the city

Yellow building, yellow tractor

Churches. Lots. Of. Churches.

Russian Church

Hagia Sophia Church

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

More weddings.

And then we got bored. We had seen most of the city. Our bus out wasn’t until 11:45 at night and we really weren’t feeling charmed with the sights. This was at about 4 pm, so we really had some time to kill. Luckily we thought of going to the archaeological museum even though it was going to close in a short time. By some total twist of fate the day we were there it was free to get in! That was an awesome surprise. And it was a really good museum! So if you’re bored in Sofia we can recommend that you go the archaeological museum!

Awesome Archaeological Museum

We came out just in time for the (hourly!!!) changing of the guard at the next building over.

Changing of the guards

At this point we gave up on any more sights and headed to the bus station to wait. I’m glad we went to Sofia, but I’m equally glad that we didn’t pick it for an entire vacation. I have to say though that it is a very photogenic city. Click on any of these photos to see the rest – there are some pretty good ones.  I’m sorry that this post is such a marathon.  We’ve been in Africa for almost a month and have not had any internet to speak of.  So we’re hoping to have somewhat of a post-a-thon in order to catch up.  There have been so many good adventures!!!

Frolicking

More lions!