Hotel Maria Luisa Sofia

... with the locals, abetted largely by Sam's fedora (more on the magic hat later). The first 3 words of our conversation started swimmingly until their entire party's attention was redirected to guests 12 through 14 in the club: a big bald guy of maybe thirty dressed in black, a skinny younger guy in jeans, and a what appeared to be a tree stump in a blazer. The new trio joined the other five and that was the end of our foray into Bulgarian society but the start of ...

... as alot of them dint have many social airs and graces, dint get me wrong there are some really nice Americans I know that my good friends Amber and Matt read this bog and they are legend who I meet on Safari in Tanzania awesome folks and it is hard to stereotype but sometimes you really can. Anyway they all went drinking for someones birthday and came in at around 4:30 drunk into the room. Two of the lads didn't make to much noise but ...

... koht oligi kohalikele suunatud korteri stiilis toitlustusasutus. Baar oli köögis, kus saime osta ka koduveini. Meil õnnestus leida vaba tuba ja mõnusalt vesteldes möödus aeg. Kõku soov "candle" baari meid viia ebaõnnestus, sest see oli kinni L Läksime siis ühte kala restosse, mis pakkus väga laia valikut erinevaid kalu. Sellega meie tuur ka lõppes ja poest läbi minnes jõudsime juba enne kümmet tagasi. Mis seal salata - eelmine päev oli meile jälje jätnud ja jõudu nõudnud.

... I didn't see any of those?!?) Well I think its fair to say we had no idea from the start. We tried to catch the 10am bus but Greg's map reading skills put us on the wrong side of the round about and we missed it. We had to wait for the 10:45 bus and we only got on the right one with the help of 2 older ladies who were going for a walk up there. Up the hill we encountered some problems with the radiator and we needed to stop about 3 or 4 times to ...

... na dworcu, i potem przemieszczaniem sie z plecakami. Pol godziny pozniej przyszedl nasz Turek i kazal wstawac, swiecac nam przy okazji latarka w oczy. Nie wiedzielismy o co chodzi. Okazalo sie, ze przyniosl ze soba... impreze. Bylismy tacy zmeczeni, ale ta podroz nauczyla nas jednej rzeczy - ze ludziom sie nie odmawia. Jaser nie mowil w innym jezyku niz turecki, a mimo to swietnie sie dogadalismy. Jedlismy, pili, rozmawiali do niemal drugiej w nocy ...

... next day. Now there's probably six Bulgarians walking around with mine and Brittany's identities. But apparently it's the law. Welcome to Eastern Europe. From the outside, our hotel looked pretty nice...3 stars. Heck, the Delta Bessborough is only a four star! It didn't take long for us to realize that there is a totally different ranking standard for hotels in Eastern Europe. Our hotel makes the HoJo look ...

... bare feet is much easier. anyway, we made it to a point at which we all decided there was absolutely nothing more to see, and then had to negotiate our way back down. they laughed at me when i started descending on my bum, but eventually everyone came around - we had a line of us all going down the side of the mountain on our ***** - must have looked pretty ridiculous, but it was SO steep. when we got down we were completely covered in ...

... they did with not much hassle. Unfortunately we then had to make our way to the border that the train with all our luggage stopped at, so we hopped in a cab and were off, arriving around 6 AM. Nervously we approached the train station, anxious to see if the train was there, but to our dismay it had left 5 minutes before. The kind cab driver then proceeded to talk to the people at the train station, and in their unique Bulgarian accent he ...

... wafting over to neighbouring tables. 5-months pregnant Lily, (suffering a little from her decision to wear all black on the hottest day of the year!) was the perfect hostess, pointing us in the direction of Sofia's must-sees (ornate cathedrals and churches hiding behind the parliamentary buildings and striking out from soviet surroundings, their sweeping cobbled squares defiantly resisting urban creep). On our one full day we explored the Vitosha hills on ...

We headed from Istanbul into Bulgaria which was a bit of an unknown destination as we hadn't meet too many people who had ventured into this country and again once we arrived in Sofia there was next to no tourists about. We had definitely also turned a corner in terms of weather as well with a very definite switch to autumn ...