In case you were wondering Sofia is a big busy city and it's really easy to get lost or go to the wrong church (you all remember ABC). But more about that later. The bus to Sofia took about 2.5 hours. There are millions of acres of unused land that we saw on all of our trips in Bulgaria. There are also huge fields of corn and sun flowers. Cannot figure out the sunflower crop. The flowers complete with heads are all black, look dead, but they are now harvesting t...

Last night we had dinner by the fountain near the start of the long pedestrian street in Plovdiv. After dinner, pork with a blueberry sauce, we each got an ice cream cone and with several hundred others we strolled the length of the pedestrian street. It's about 20 blocks long, twice as wide as a regular street and lined with shops on both sides. It was really fun to watch families spending time together just walking the street. There was a puppet show, a fiddler...

Our very expensive taxi ride from Veliko Tarnovo was uneventful, about 3 hours and we were delivered to our hotel. For the cost we should have been carried to our room. Part of the trip was really hilly and part was like Saskatchewan. Our hotel is Plovdiv is Roots Hotel & Wine Bar. Guess who picked it. The owner lived in Toronto for 20+ years so speaks great English. He was really helpful with the map showing how to navigate Plovdiv and recommending resta...

Our hotel gave us a really small crappy map of Veliko. We went to tourist information and got a good one. While there she mentioned a walking tour of Veliko so we went. The first stop was the statue of Mother Bulgaria where our guide covered the entire history of Bulgaria, starting in the 5th century BC. OMG it was awful and the temp was over 30. We sneaked away quietly. We walked pretty much all of old town. Th6is is really neat city. Hilly, rough cobblestone...

On our last day in the beach town of Varna we went to see the Aladzha Monastery. Maggi at the B&B told us what bus to take, the place is 23 km out of town. She told us to make sure to tell the drIver we wanted to go to the Monastery. We did and he dropped us off at a deserted turnout on a 4 lane hiway and pointed. We walked along what felt like the Deerfoot for about 1 km (it felt longer). Finally a sign. We turned left walked another km up hill and there i...