Crystal Palace Sofia

... different empires come in, conquer, flourish and then be conquered themselves.

London and those popular places on the tourist trail are neat but you look at Big Ben and the reaction is like "cool, next site now..." Walk around Sofia a few hours and surprise discoveries like St. Georgy leave you really impressed when you think about how old they are. The best part was that when I walked inside this plain brick building the size of a Burger ...

... would interest them.

He reminded me (a little) of Bulgaria's national hero, Vasil Levsky, who in the 1800s organized peoples' revolts against their Turkish occupiers. Selflessly, he said, "If I succeed, the victory will belong to all of us. If I fail, the loss will be only mine." But, in the end, a fellow countryman betrayed Levsky, and he was put to death.

Happy to be alive - and happy to be returning home - after a few days in Sofia, I rode buses ...

... s and enjoyed many of the sights of Plovdiv. However, after being away from home for almost a week we were ready to start the 12 hour journey back. It was mostly uneventful. Hannah and I picked up a bottle of Kahlua and Rum at the duty free shop, and we had to do the same process of getting on and off the train to go through customs. Once back in Istanbul, we were able to see the ...

... went for a stiff drink afterwards. There was meant to be a nice hotel waiting for us in Sofia but it quickly came to light that we had been booked into a hostel - A HOSTEL!!! Me in a HOSTEL - you've gotta be joking.... So we stayed one night with the clapped out heating drip, drip, dripping and the only comfort was that we were the only people in the room with FIVE single beds! The next day we swiftly booked ourselves into a 4 ...

... directions from the bus depot to the hostel via the overland tram. Our hostel was called Hostel Mostel, which sounds aggregious but is hostelworld's highest rated hostel in Sofia. And I can see why: nice, English-speaking staff, clean comfortable rooms, clean bathrooms, a nice lounge with free pool and a flat screen cable tv, free Internet, and your 16-20 lev per night (about $12-15) gets you a brilliant breakfast of wheat ...

A day of Sofia was more then enough; we were dressed completely normal. And every second guy stared at us. The only normal guy was this seller at the market, where we bought an ashtray and a cup. He started explaining that, as a trucker, he was in Slovenia, in Ljubljana and that he also visited Koper. Then he lowered our price to 4 Lev and said farewell. In ...

... on the piano and guitar. We were trying to escape to get some dinner when he stopped us again to write down suggestions for food. Eventually we made it out and once out of earshot were laughing and doing Wasko impressions. There were a few cafes in town only serving drinks then we found a place with food. The guy running it was friendly and we ordered the usual - greasey Bulgarian food. After dinner we tried to sneak back into Wasko's but he heard us. He didn't talk too ...

... my connecting flight to Sofia, which got me in at about 5 in the morning. 2 more hours of buses and walking until I finally found my hostel and could get some sleep! Still, what with my flight only costing 1p (on the highly reputable Wizz airlines), what did I expect? Had a little explore of Sofia this afternoon, but haven't really had a chance to see much yet. I'll explore more tomorrow, when I'm not quite so tired. Also, it's not that cold here!! Yet.

... the ocean, and spend our money on tequila and use the beach as a bed. Adam & Ethan went freestyle after Adam lost his bathing suit on the way to the ocean which he miracously found the next day. The club was open air and somewaht reminicent of Budapest. Tecquila was cheap, vodka was yummy, and beer closed the deal as we danced the night away. Adam got sleepy and headed for a nap in the car around 3:30 while the rest of us were offered free vodka from some other bulgarian ...