Hemus Hotel Sofia

... an Orthodox priest with his long beard and robe was swinging an incense burner and chanting. Still in use after all these centuries! Sorry Big Ben or House of Parliament...you can't compete with type of authenticity and history. <br><br>Even my short stop the other day in Split leaves more of an impression than looking at some old buildings in Paris. I had no idea I'd find Diocletian's Palace and it's impressive to say the least that Big D's ...

... the end of the city. I had purchased a roundtrip ticket from Istanbul to Chicago, and I had to travel 360 miles to catch my flight, which would be leaving from Istanbul in twenty-four hours. Normally, I disliked hitchhiking with a deadline. But, I figured I had plenty of time.<br><br>All day, nice Bulgarian drivers picked me up.<br><br>I got closer, and closer, and closer to the border. But, I couldn't get to it. Why weren't the Turkish drivers picking me up!!? I got ...

... walls, which date back to 3,000 years ago. It was a really awe-inspiring sight. The walls were completely intact for a few miles and you could almost imagine MehmettII's army advancing with ladders and catapults nearly 700 years ago. Back in Sariyer, Hannah and I grabbed a couple of chicken sandwitches, called "tavuk doners" and headed home to shower and catch up on some much needed sleep.

... 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 ...

... leaving before whenever arrived. Anyway, Transylvania was awesome, not to be missed in Romania. Our train to Sofia in Bulgaria was physically uncomfortable, but quite fun. We couldn't get a sleeper cabin, so sat in a compartment with three other guys from Latvia travelling their way to Tibet via the turbulent Middle East. Oh so amusing they were, dressed the same in army garb (they are not in the army), with the same army boots, army packs and tents and ...

... 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 ...

... scenery. We found out the monastery charged 50 leva per nights so walked through the back gate another 1.5km to a campground with bungalows. Had another breakfast, relaxed by the river and settled in at the bungalow. We went hiking up the mountain through some lovely meadows, a "magical" forest and to some churches. We continued on up the hill and ended at a place with a nice view. Hung out there a short while before going down and back to the river to soak our feet ...

... it, and as a result they stopped our song halfway through :-( Then we headed out to the rather sleezy club Twice (which claims to being "You're only vice.") and danced until the wee hours of ther morning. Saturday night we caught the overnight train down to Sofia. While waiting at the station we met the delightful Christina from Moldavia, who wanted us to swap passports with her. We politely declined and boarded our train. I had to share a room with C2 as girls and ...

... characteristic for the resort. Most of the hotels were closed as it was off season, so we slept in a renovated 2 star hotel. The furniture in the room had these wool coverings which were very popular in Bulgaria during the 70s and still very much used in the more cold areas, they creeped me out. In the evening we drove to the center of the resort, which was completely empty, but there was one restaurant open, something called the black cat it was pretty good.