Central Hotel Sofia

... properly on Thursday, though.

"We" consisted of Dan; his longtime friend Matt, who arrived a night later; Sam, a tall, skinny, loud Aussie with longish curly hair that under effect of his fedora looks like Shirley Temple; Jo, his short, softspoken English girlfriend; and another Aussie whose name I don't feel bad about forgetting because it's just plain odd - I vaguely get recall it ends with "ram". The latter was a tad on the weird side, and not just because ...

... try other similar shops and find one in tartan for about £6.50. A result only marred by getting totally lost and spending ages pounding the hot pavement trying to get back to the hostel. Having got there i experimented with putting the pannier in the shopping bag and it fits. This solves the problem of how to attach it too. I love it! A bit of sleep and I go to chat to the other guests. Buy some beers hang out etc. Meet a ...

... küllaga ning mingi hetke pärast saime ka õnnelikult lennule. Selle lennu magasime vist enamuses lihtsalt maha. Mingi hetk olime kohal ja kuulsime piloodi ärevaks tegevaid kommentaare kohaliku temperatuuri kohta - tervelt 8 kraadi miinust! Ütleme siis nii, et see temperatuur oli pehmelt öeldes "ootamatu" ning asusime vaikselt asjaga kohanema. Kerge vaevaga saime lennujaamast takso ning Kõku südikal juhtimisel jõudsime peagi ka tema korterisse. Kui enne oli ...

... that we made that we are on a slower train. Staff are now rested and we are on our way. About and hour or so later we bite the bullet and Leonie finally heads to ask the ticket lady when we will arrive in Sofia. After some charades we find out we will arrive 10 minutes before our overnight train leaves - F&&K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We both loose it now.. Leonie cries and the next thing (its a female thing that we found works) you know the whole ...

... receptionist for a little bit the first evening in our hotel, Lauren using a hammer to break a an special egg (our dinner), and the delicious "melbas" (type of icecream) we had! More to be shared later, now if I don't mess things up I should be able to unload some pictures :) Best, Iva ps...ok, so I totally messed up, I think I created a whole different blog, sorry, Liz...\\ but here are some pics:

... at 5 a.m. The yawning man at the Metro Turizm desk told us there was no service bus until 7. We went outside and asked the taxi drivers, who flocked to us like pidgeons to feed, for the daytime taxi rate to Taksim (taxi drivers at the bus and train stations are notorious for giving tourists the night rate, which is double the price). About one kilometer down the interstate we knew we were dealing with a rigged meter. The price ...

after a monsterous 14 hour train journey from athens, i'm now here in bulgaria. its pretty cool. i can't understand the cyrillic alphabet at all, so i get lost every 20 metres because the street signs are in bulgarian, but i'm getting better at paying attention to my whereabouts now, so thats alright. the funniest bit is not being able to speak, or even pronounce, a word of the language. and in bulgaria, you shake your head to mean yes, and ...

... By this point my stomach was growling something fierce so I stepped out for a bite at the nearest restaurant. It was an outlandish American diner-themed chain restaurant called "Happy Bar & Grill" complete with retro jukeboxes and young waitresses in go-go boots. While gazing into the Cyrillic letters on the ...

... to commemorate 1300 years of Sofie being a city, but the sooner they pull it down, the better the city will be !!!! There was also some markets with loads of baklava and cakes, so we dived in. I thought it was fair as I have lost loads of weight on this trip. Dinner was traditional Bulgarian, washed down with their finest red as usual Next morning, we were up early as we had a day trip to the Rila mountains. We were going there as we ...

... us that the young people can speak English, but the older population will speak German or possibly French. It turns out that we had to go to the domestic terminal 50 metres up the road, we were finally away again after a few nervous moments! Bansko it nestled in the foothills of the World Heritage Listed Pirin National Park, one of the snow resorts in Bulgaria, but as it is the start of summer, it so happens that its the off-season and prices are ...