Just a quick one to explain our past 24 hours...

Left Yambol very early on the bus to Sofia. Had hours to kill in Sofia so went in search of the Cathedral. FOUND IT! It is beautiful. Every inch of the interior is painted with some sort of story. The chandelier's were massive. We walked back to the train station to kill some more time. Information wasn't very informative when we asked where our platform was, but luckily we used our wits and asked the driver of the train we thought it was, again we found it.

Train was an overnight sleeper and we lucked out in getting our own compartment for the 13 hour trip. The scenery is really nice with lots of mountains, trees and rivers. It was quite a contrast to the wide open fields in the north. Then came the border crossing. I have had my share of being searched or interrogated at border crossings, and I'm always afraid that for some reason or another I won't be let through. On the Bulgarian side they took my passport away to be stamped, of course this makes sense but when you are on a train that could move at any time and your passport is in a small building with a big guy for some reason you get tense as more time goes by. I couldn't sit still, but eventually l got it back with yet another stamp (Del's doesn't have any yet, HA HA) Then came the Greek side and they again checked passports. But much nicer about it. I was asked to just wait outside the building and they would be along to stamp my passport. We decided to take this opportunity to fill our water bottles as we were at the point of rationing water. So I got off and a lovely old Greek border guard offered to fill them for me, when doing this we had a chat about how much the Greeks like Canada. After my passport was stamped I said thank you to him again and he waved me over to some potted flowers. Asked me to sniff them and what I thought of them. I said they were nice, so he picked me a couple and gave them to me. LOL, never have I had a border crossing quite like it.

Anyways we arrived in Athens. Took some time to find the hostel as our directions were in English and all the street signs in Greek (different letters). After 45min we finally found it. really it should have taken 5 min max.

Tomorrow we catch the boat and continue our adventure...