Since it's our last day to do something in Sofia, we decided to join the Cultural Tour we'd heard about the other day during the Free Sofia Tour. We walked over to Vitosha pedestrian area and shopped a bit until time to meet up with the guide. Her name was Elisa, and she was from Sofia. Very cute and a great speaker. We had a group of about 12, and to our surprise there were 2 Americans with us! They were from Ohio and the woman's name was also Beth! We were...

Plovdiv is the second largest city in Bulgaria, and we decided to take a day and go visit it. Our tour guide from the Free Sofia Tour had mentioned it as something worth seeing. We caught a bus to take us to the main bus station, where we bought tickets. Not as easy as it sounds when all the signs are in letters that make no sense to us. The ride took 2.5 hours, but the bus was really nice and comfy. The only downside was the driver was smoking and playing the...

A trip to the mall was the highlight of today. Apparently, Bulgarians are mad about malls, and there are a lot of them in Sofia! We visited another big one called Paradise--lots of typical stores and it was pretty busy for a weekday. We wandered around for a couple hours, then caught the local tram and headed home. Dinner was at a restaurant that we visited yesterday on the free food tour--way more food than we could eat, and all for $25, including drinks. ...

Rich made a quick trip to a pharmacy and got some meds, started feeling better and away we went. We walked to the big cathedral we saw yesterday, and got a bite to eat at a place nearby. The city guide bus pulled up as we were leaving the restaurant, and we were two of about 15 people on the bus for the tour. It was a different tour insofar as there was a live guide and we didn't have the option to get off and back on. Once you were on, you stayed for the entire...

Today's outing was to join a Free Sofia Tour. We've seen the free tours in other cities, but haven't ever done one. Our tour guide, Dino, was very knowledgeable and humorous at the same time. It made learning the history of Sofia a lot more enjoyable than just getting the facts. He was also easy on the eyes, which always makes it more fun. :)) The tour was supposed to be only in English, but a group of Italians showed up and insisted he do it in Italian as well...