Elate Plaza Sofia

... crack and break your own back. The sidewalks are mostly concrete slabs laid out and many are loose. If you step on the edge of a loose one, the entire thing will pop up. It's like one of those cartoons where someone steps on the edge of a rake and the handle pops up and hits him in the face. It's not as extreme here obviously but you get the picture. <br><br>Certain slabs give access to whatever fancy underworld lies beneath the surface and ...

... smile, and eyes that closed when he was happy. And he was nostalgic while speaking Russian with me. He recalled when he'd driven children from Moscow on buses to Bulgaria's Black Sea. Happy, he said, "Oni byli xoroshie deti. Ya sprashival, 'U tebya yest mama i papa?' Mne govorili, 'Da.' Ya sprashival, 'I tvoya mama xoroshaya?' 'Da!" (They were good children. I asked them, 'Do you have a mom and a dad?' They said, 'Yes.' I asked, 'And do you have a good mom?' 'Yes ...

... cafe. Not the ideal way to spend a birthday, although, I told Hannah that we have spend other birthdays doing far less than waiting in a train station in Bulgaria. She soon agreed and we started to enjoy our cafe experience. Luckily, this cafe -as most places in Bulgaria- sold beer and spirits. I went to grab a couple of beers for Peter and I when I noticed a bottle of something ...

... night when we arrived at the lakes and we decided to spend the evening on our own as once we reached Sofia it would be a whirl wind of meeting people and going places... We weren't due to be in Sofia till Monday but I was feeling restless (must have been the thunder storm) and we couldn't decide what to do so I wrote all the available options on bits of paper and put them in a hat for Ned to choose one.... Stay where we were. Find ...

... Romania, was balanced out by the man from hell at the train station that told us he didn't care if we stayed in the station forever as he was angry we had a guesthouse booked already and wouldn't go to his. Anyway. We decided to skip Bucharest as other travelers had told us it was ok to do so, and instead we headed to Brasov in Transylvania to spend some time with Dracula. I said that to get it out of all your systems. That is not what Transylvania is ...

... this evening we had chinese take-out. The "spicey chicken" was pretty good, but we all agreed that the "five fragrances beef" left a little to be desired. Too much cinnamon? We did find out this evening from Paul and Erin that they are going to have to fly back to the US rather unexpectedly to get some medical care for Paul. They have to fly out on Wednesday, so we will be on our own here for a couple of days. We will miss the time with them ...

... ll only know if I get my money back in three weeks. It is very frustrating, let me tell you. I did make my booking and we made it back to LP's bus station at twenty minutes to three. I bought two return tickets but it isn't really a bus station. A person can only buy tickets there and the real station is a kilometer away, underneath the train station. We took a cab at ten minutes to, and wasted away most of the minutes to three in traffic. We bolted into the bus ...

... 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 ...

That'll teach me to do things on the cheap! That has to have been the most tiring journey I have ever made. Setting off from Portsmouth at 8 yesterday morning, it took me almost 24 hours of tedium to reach Sofia. Almost 3 hours to get to london, then a 4 hour wait for my shuttle to Luton airport, another hour to get to Luton, 2.5 hour wait for the flight, 4 hours (I think - lost track somewhere around here) to Budapest, a mind numbing 5 hour wait ...

... and breathtaking views of the ocean. We were showered by gifts by our Bulgarian hosts and headed to another cafe where we found the Bulgarian rendition of lemonade to be essentially pure lemon juice. The kids decided to split from the adults and we headed to another cafe for some more sitting at a party town called Sunny Beach before attempting to find a hotel. Our Bulgarian counterparts looked and looked to no avail so, at midnight, we decided to clean ourselves ...