Jordan and I booked a day trip to the Rila Monastery in the mountains of Bulgaria. The monastery was founded in the 10th century by Saint Ivan, who lived in a nearby cave as a hermit. The monastery was important to preserving Bulgarian heritage and religion while under Ottoman rule.
We took a large van to the monastery which was a little under 2 hour drive. When we got there, it was cold and drizzling out, but we paid no mind. The monastery was absolutely gorgeous!
We walked around the grounds and wandered into the main church. The church was dark, only lit by candles, and very ornate. We saw a monk inside giving blessings but did not stay too long because we didn’t want to stare and ruin the moment.
Outside the church 
Every inch was covered in frescos 
The monks’ residences 
Here you can see the mountain through the fog 
This tower is the oldest remaining structure at Rila 
Outside of the church are dozen of beautiful frescos. We laughed when we found a series of them depicting scenes from Hell.
It wasn’t long before we felt that we saw all we could see, and we were told we have 2 hours there, so we decided to explore a little outside. While exploring, we found a trail leading up. The signs and the map were all in Bulgarian, but we had a good guess which trail might lead up to St Ivan’s cave. We followed it up a while and I felt totally invigorated by getting to take a short hike in the woods as it is something I have missed.
We were cold, but the steep walk up quickly warmed us. We continued to follow the signs that indicated St Ivan’s cave, but eventually came to a spot where trees were blocking our path. If there were one or two trees fallen across the trail, we would have continued onward, but there were many more than that, so we took that as a sign to turn around.
Our trail 
A grave for one of the monks in the 19th/20th centuries 
A few too many obstacles for a short winter hike
By the time we reached the bottom of the hill again, it began to snow. This was yet another thing I missed and was really excited to see! Jordan and I walked through the gently falling snow to a nearby cafe to warm up with some soup. This excursion took just enough time to make it back to our van to meet our driver.
As we walked up to the van, I spotted some of the stray dogs we saw wandering around the monastery. Jordan reminded me not to pet them since they are strays, but our driver told us that they were essentially taken in and had tags, so they would be fairly clean and friendly. I happily scratched a big black dog under the chin who nudged me every time I stopped!
At this point, the snow really started to pick up. By the time we reached the highway, trucks were pulled over on the side of the road and cars were backed up. Our trip to Rila took an hour and 45 minutes. Our trip back to Sofia took about 3 hours! When we finally returned, we were blown away by how much more beautiful the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was at night and covered in snow.
