It’s our final night in Sofia and the last couple of days have passed gently with packing, cleaning, eating the last of our cucumbers (obviously) and spending our last Bulgarian leva (2 bottles of wine and 200ml bottle of vodka... 11 leva/€5.50/A$9 say). Nothing worse that leaving a country with currency unspent - so that was a final jaunt to the supermarket this afternoon. It’s been a day of contrasts. It was cold and a bit hazy last night when we walked...

In order to see a city, we reckon you have to get out and about on foot. Leaving the house/Hardie Hobbit Hole is also a requirement as it turns out. We figured we’d skip the metro on the way into the city as it was only 1 stop and it’s almost a kilometre to actually reach our local metro station. In hindsight walking 2.8 km to get to the start of a 2 hour walking tour might have been somewhat ambitious - but it was a stunningly sunny day, all the snow had dis...

After the 18 odd degrees we left behind in Rome (and sunshine), there was the tiniest bit of culture (climate?) shock when we arrived into Sofia Airport. Everything bar the runways themselves were buried in deep snow! The ride in the approved airport taxi into town had it’s fair share of laughs (tears?) as he tried the standard rort-the-tourist routine... 12.70 lev fare... so we rounded it to 15 and went to pay with a 20... (equivalent to €10) - oh no... cou...