As teachers, Jordan and I have nearly a month off for the holidays, so we made sure to spend that time wisely by traveling all we could. Our first stop was Sofia, Bulgaria. We left the airport in Dubai on a Friday evening and arrived at about 1am to Bulgaria.
We made sure to make a beeline for one of the taxi booths at the airport. I would give the same advice that was given to me before visiting Sofia, which is to avoid people that approach you about taking a taxi. These are usually people looking to overcharge you and rip you off. We went with the OK-Taxi company, which is known to be fairly reputable.
When we walked outside to catch our cab, we started giggling like children because we could see our breath. It had been a long time since we were that cold! Our taxi, however, was warm and toasty. The cab ride cost 10 leva, or about $5. A cab ride from the airport should cost no more than 15 leva, so we knew our price was reasonable.
Despite our late arrival, I was up around 6am and Jordan was up around 8, because we are incapable of sleeping in (Jordan would say 8am WAS sleeping in). In the light of day we admired our airbnb apartment. There was a balcony with a gorgeous view of Vitosha Mountain.
We started our day by walking to a coffee shop in the city center. The walk was really nice in the brisk cold and gave us a good view of the city. Sofia has a mix of gorgeous old buildings in bright colors with nice white trim, alongside stark concrete buildings from the Soviet era. We saw some similar former USSR areas in certain neighborhoods in Berlin, but Sofia really had it in spades.
What made this even cooler was the abundance of street art — and not just the mural kind we see in Laramie, WY. Throughout the streets of Sofia are colorful tags. Instead of cracking down on this, Sofia seems to have embraced it and made this part of the culture of the city. I think this really worked well. The city has an edge to it, but we never once felt unsafe while we were there. It was a good balance.
At this point it was nearly 11am which is time for the Free Sofia Tour (link). A company called 365 operates tours of the city for free every single day. When we got there, the tour guides announced that there would also be a Culture Tour of Sofia happening at 11am that only happens on Saturdays, so we decided to do that tour instead since we had the option to do the other one while we were there.
The Culture Tour costs 20 leva, or about $11. This tour is 3 hours long and includes food. Our tour guide, Viki, taught us about the history of Bulgaria before taking us to a corner bakery for breakfast. We were given Boza, a fermented wheat drink that Bulgarians have for breakfast that a brewer would recognize as the flavor of wort. We also were given Ayran, a yogurt drink that we recognized as laban, a drink popular in the UAE. We also had banitsa, a phyllo dough pastry filled with egg and cheese. Jordan and I were instantly obsessed with banitsa.
Viki then took us to the 365 headquarters and taught us the cyrillic alphabet. She gave us handy cards with the alphabet and useful phrases, and had us write our names in Bulgarian. My name was much easier than Jordan’s! Viki also brought us to a doll museum and taught us about traditional clothing and holidays in Bulgaria.
After that, Viki took our group to the city park where we drank rakia, a Balkan fruit brandy, and learned some traditional Bulgarian dances. Our last stop was at a tea house where we warmed up and learned about Bulgarian roses and had rose tea and jam.
Although the tour fed us, we were still hungry so we walked to a place called Supa Star. We figured soup would be perfect in the cold weather. Everything there was in Bulgarian, so we chose soups based off of what they looked like. We guessed what they were after a few bites, and when we translated our receipt we were happy to be proved correct. I had a tasty lentil soup and Jordan had a pumpkin and carrot soup. I really don’t think you could go wrong with anything served there.
Once we got our fill of soup, we walked the city to see some of the sights. We wandered into the Russian Church, also known as Church of St Nicholas the Miracle-Maker. The inside was incredibly ornate, with every inch covered in either painting or gold. I found myself wishing I was allowed to take pictures of the inside, but the way everything was lit by candlelight, I wouldn’t have done it justice anyhow.
We figured we would make our next stop the Sofia Central Market, so we started walking in that direction. We came to a big busy intersection and saw stairs leading down to the subway. Figuring that it would be easier to cross that way, we headed down. What we found below had us laughing in disbelief. We knew there were some Roman ruins in Sofia, but we had no idea how extensive. What we had stumbled upon was a big network of ancient ruins!
Jordan and I wandered through the ruins, seeing crumbled walls, columns, and ancient pots. I brushed my hand along the walls, thinking of the people thousands of years ago who built them.
Once we saw everything there, we moved on towards our original destination — the Central Market. The market was okay. It was fairly pretty inside with a Christmas tree and garland draping the walls. We sat at the bar and ordered beers which came to 5 leva. That was less than $3 for two beers! They weren’t very good, but we were really happy they were so cheap. In the UAE, similar beer would cost about $8 each.
That evening we tried to visit the Christmas Market in city park. We were able to grab some mulled wine there, but ended up leaving quickly to avoid the crowds. It was a Saturday night so there were tons of people there. We finished our drinks, ate some “grab and go” pizza, walked to a store to get beers and some snacks, then headed back to our airbnb. It was only 6:30pm when we got there, but we were exhausted and wanted to rest up for another big day.
