Hotel Europe Sofia

A beautiful afternoon sailing on Lake Iskar, 40 km from Sofia. This is the lake where I learned to sail many years ago, and it was wonderful to go back. We sailed with my cousin Reny, her husband Rosen on their boat. Their little girls Bobi and Lili were great sailors. My brother Plamen also joined us.

<br>Woke up relatively early, had some Argentinian tea, barely palatable but was told it has a reasonable level of vitamins and beneficial elements for the body. Got a ride almost right away, split paths with Polish guy and got a ride with a Turkish guy going to Sofia. Not much happened on the way, had a coffee and admired the countryside. Stopped for lunch and had a surprisingly good salad. I ...

... everything (for an Aussie who still can't get used to snow) was picture perfect - the trees still had snow on the boughs and leaves and it was all just white and shining - and unfortunately too dry to actually be able to make a snowball out of it which was maybe just as well. Once arriving at the area to get ski passes and ski hire etc we were told that unfortunately due to lack of snow only a red and black run were open going down ...

... Gigou, I am already aware of that trick!" Of course it's now 9:30 and all the currency exchange places are closed so I stopped off at McDonald's (credit card friendly) for a bite to eat. When walking back to the hostel I saw what looked like money on the ground, and sure enough it was 7 leva! The second time on this trip I found money on the ground! It couldn't have come at a better time. With the .27 leva I had now all I need is another .17 and I ...

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... note about this cathedral was a reliquary at the front of the cathedral that apparently contained a piece of bone from St. Alexander Nevski. The bone piece was inside a small (maybe 1" x 0.5") box which was inside another glass case. We're speculating about what it actually was, but whatever it was, it had something to do with St. Nevski. Several people came up and kissed the glass while we were standing there. Our next stop was St. Sophia Cathedral which was ...

... There were some lions, though, in front of a building that the French speaking woman I met in McDonald's lovingly compared to Paris' Palais de Justice. The yellow brick road led us to Alexander Nevski Church, more or less. We were distracted from our way by stout looking wooden-roofed church (actually the Russian Church of St. Nicolai), the possiblities of a toilet and a street market. The latter was the most interesting of the three. Beyond doilies ...

... Bucharest) (July 10) Had an extra long train ride from Bucharest back into Bulgaria. We went for about 45 min then the train stopped for an hour. Got to the border and it stopped for an hour. Crossed into Bulgaria and it stopped for an hour (another immigration check). So after over 4 hours we'd gone a total of about 80km (~53 miles). After about 7 hours I made it to Gorna Oryahovitsa nearby to my destination. From there I caught a bus to Veliko Turnovo. Walked around lost ...

... not easy to learn since there's no good dictionaries, and no good textbooks. you literally have to be in bulgaria or with a bulgarian to learn it. so it turns out that this girl (Sasha) is in Bulgaria for an entire year on a Fulbright scholarship (lucky dog) to study ecotourism and economic development in Bulgaria. she's now a ski instructor at Bansko ski resort (4,500 vertical feet, bigger than the biggest in the U.S.) though by the sounds of it her main ...

... there before it got dark. We were going to stay up the mountain in a hostel - not sure what the accommodation was going to be like as we were only going on second hand information, so we ended up taking crackers and tuna (the ultimate travel food) - just in case there was nothing up there. Just to give you an idea the guys often mentioned about being on boot camp (sudden urges to exercise to compensate all the food and alcohol that they had consumed ...