Our first day in Sofia was spent recovering from the long train ride and late night getting to bed. We both slept late, 8:30 for me (can you believe!?), and I felt groggy most of the day.

Once we were dressed, we decided to walk over to a mall that is about 10 minutes from us. It's enormous!! Not so much in acreage, but it is 6 levels--2 underground and 4 up! Pretty typical stores for a mall, including a movie theater with IMAX. Nothing is showing right now that I care to see, such as the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, or something that looks like Wonder Woman. Petra told us they are in English with Bulgarian subtitles.

The Bulgarian Lev is stronger against the dollar than the Romanian Leu, so money doesn't go as far here as it did in Bucharest. It's still fairly inexpensive, though, especially compared to Western Europe.

After the mall, grocery shopping was on the agenda. What an experience that was. They use the Cyrillic alphabet here, so I can't recognize ANY of the words in a product, or even begin to know what it is. I googled what Greek yogurt is in Bulgarian, this is what it looks like: гръцко кисело мляко. I found something in a container that had some of that writing on it--haven't opened it yet, so who knows what I got! LOL This is what thank you looks like, Благодаря. How do I even begin to pronounce it?? All I know is that driving to our next destination is going to be a wild ride!!

We can't drink the water here, so Rich went out and brought back a giant water jug. Fortunately, there's a little store right in our building that has them, so he didn't have too far to carry it.

He found a restaurant for us to try for dinner that was a short distance away, and luckily their menu was in English as well as Bulgarian. I had a chicken and pork bread bowl, he had a lamb dish and we shared a traditional Bulgarian salad called Shopska...made with chopped cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, roasted peppers and onion, all delicious! No dessert, too full and nothing that really caught our eye anyway.

Our apartment is on the 9th floor, the "penthouse," and we have a nice view--mountains surround the city, and we get a nice breeze up here. There is a small elevator, and I'm very thankful for it!

A good first day in Sophia!