Paul and Jean tour Bulgaria: Day 1

After a good flight with Wizz Air from Luton, we arrived at Sofia and took a taxi to the hotel. It is a Best Western and the room is very large and quite luxurious with a leather sofa, kettle and lovely bathroom. It was paid for with Pauls airmiles!

After a quick rest we headed into the city - or so we thought. The streets are not well marked and it turned out we were going the wrong way. The hotel was marked on the map but on the wrong side of the road. We ended up at the Central Train and Bus station. We tried to get a 3 day ticket for the transport system but could not find anyone in the ticket kiosks that spoke any English. We ended up with 3 day tickets - for today which was not very useful as we had a spare ticket.

We finally found our way to the city centre where we had an hour to spare before the free 2 hour sightseeing tour started. We went to McDonalds where I had an ice cream and Paul had substantially more. While there we had an unexpected heavy rain shower. The rain continued on and off for the rest of the evening and the temperature dropped so it was quite cold towards the end of the evening.

The sightseeing tour was excellent and our guide led us around the city and gave some very interesting information.

We were particularly surprised to see evidence of an ancient city and a roman city in the city centre in the form of walls, pillars and foundations of former buildings. Much of this had been uncovered when the Metro System was being built earlier this century and work had to stop for 8 years while archeologists excavated the site. There are some open air exhibits and some are underground but all are open to the public to walk around.

The tour took us to several churches, cathedrals and the mosque and also to the parliament buildings. We were told the reason for the city name. This was because a church was first built at the highest point of the city and called St Sophia's. This was a famous landmark and people would say "we are going to Sophia" to visit the church. This then led the city to be called Sofia.

After the tour we made our way back to the hotel and had a meal there. The hotel prices for food and drink are about the same as we pay at the White Horse so cheap by our standards.

We will probably go around the landmarks again tomorrow and maybe a little further afield. The weather is forecast to be better than today.