Hill Hotel Sofia

... 2000 year old retirement home is still a living part of the city. <br><br>What do we have to show in Atlanta that would wow someone like these sites from thousands of years ago? Actually I got it...America's first public housing project...Techwood Homes from 1936...demolished to make way for the Olympic dorms...Yeah, take your visitors there to that former site...now there's some home grown history to compete with St. Georgy or Diocletian!!!<br><br><br>

... started screaming obscenities, essentially decided I would never travel again. Borders were always tough to hitchhike through. Maybe it was the deadline that was causing me to lose my temper?<br><br>In the end, nice Turkish drivers took me all the way to Istanbul's airport, which was easily accessible from the West. We arrived at 2:30 a.m., on May 27th. My flight was at 11:30. I slept in my sleeping bag in a hidden spot on the airport's lawn. I flew to Chicago ...

So rise and shine at the ungodly hour of 5am to shower pick up our takeaway breakfast (muffin, banana, yogurt, orange juice) and head out to the tube. Despite being told that the first tube was at 5.40 it was not to be (or so we were told by a local newspaper seller) so we trudged down the street to Paddington which was luckily very close by, for the very expensive Heathrow express. Having ...

... spa hotel - thank god for my laptop and plastic and as it was our 3 year anniversary (can you believe it) we thought, lets get a deluxe suite for 2 nights and then move to a normal room - why the hell not eh! We arrived in our deluxe suite only to discover that our idea of deluxe and the Bulgarian idea of deluxe was as far apart from each other as we were from home! Well as you can imagine I got us moved quick sharpish to another ...

... bags should they go camping in -20 degrees instead of staying in a hostel or guesthouse. But it's ok, they said, the sleeping bags were rated to -30 degrees (although they haven't tested that theory), and they're lugging around a Coleman stove with three aluminum pots to boil water. THAT, my friends, is roughing it. Or stupid. Anyway, when we arrived in Sofia we all ran to book our onward train to Istanbul and only five spaces were left, so we may be ...

... jam, butter, hard-boiled eggs, two kinds of meat (ham!) and cheese, juice, and free coffee and tea all day long. At night you get a complimentary pasta dinner, which is bland but edible, and a glass of beer. The hostel even let us have breakfast as soon as we arrived. I must note at this point that my first visit to Sofia coincided with George Bush's first visit. George was on an Eastern European tour, and he was fresh from Albania ...

... the older people are much nicer and communicative than the younger generations. They were all interested in where we're from and everyone knew Slovenia and Ljubljana. Some granddad in the parking house even told us that his [now already passed, let her rest in peace] wife liked SLO so much that she wanted to stay there. But that's all about it. the ...

... the water was icy cold). Stephanie was trying to rest back at the bungalow, but I wouldn't let her and dragged her out of bed to go back to Rila Monastery. Looked around there and got more pictures. There was a service going on in the church part of it. Just outside the monastery, we had some donuts at a little bakery. Walked back to camp and napped. Had a big dinner at the campground's restaurant and a good conversation. Stephanie ordered mixed salad for us to share ...

... sharing a room is strictly forbidden unless you pay for first class!!! But there was a lonely suitcase in our room which, for half an hour or so, I was convinced was a bomb (I seem to have inherited a little of Mum's paranoia). Sofia is alot nicer than Bucharest. It's feels alot more like Western Europe than Romania does and there is shopping equal to any other European city. It's a nice change after being in one place for so long! We got caught ticketless on the tram ...

We arrived in Sofia late in the afternoon and returned the car. Then we took a cab to Ina's aunt, Shelly where we later spent the night. We took a bus to the center and went to Bulgarias first and only mall, which had escalators (Ina says this was a really big deal when it was built in Bulgaria) Then we met Ina's cousin and we went looking for synagogue in Sofia ,which was closed. But looked nice from the outside. From there we went to a very big closed market place ...