Jasmin Sofia

The plan worked, the Gods were with me - I flew from Cape Town to Sofia and landed there at 10:00 am, for my birthday. I was so happy to see my parents and brother at the airport. My mum told me that this is exactly the time when I was born. It's great to be home! The big 40!Don't be afraid of it! I have never felt better and been happier in my life. <br><br>I had slept only 2 hours on the plane. Started ...

... to pay my share at least but he wouldn't allow, but rather suggested I gave it as a tip to the waitress, it was a small price to pay to ensure a safe passage to Sofia. Arrived in Sofia at 1pm, but decided provided it was so early that I could perhaps managed to get to Belgrade. Tried to hitchhike a little out of Sofia, but to no avail. Remained there for 5hrs, sitting under the shade of the ...

... mountain, nothing higher as it was too sparsely covered and none of the ski lifts were operating. Since my first attempt at skiing was in Quebec in 2001 I had no wish to start learning here so we decided to watch the kids show how easy it was when you started young and then bought some plastic toboggans and went tobogganing instead! That was awesome fun as since we were so much heavier than the kids we went much further, faster and ...

... t have to change any money. I don't know what it is but someone is looking out for me because when I made it back to my room there was a .20 leva coin on the floor near the bed. This is too weird I thought but I wasn't going to complain. Well now I have a long train ride (14 hours) ahead of me to Transylvania --- daytime travel sucks! Oh yeah, amongst all the craziness of the past few days I did a little sightseeing. So feel free to look at the photos.

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... the most interesting of any we visited today. If you weren't told it was something special, you would pass it by as a junky old building, but it is like stepping back in time to walk inside. In a nutshell, the site started as a Roman theater under the emperor Commodus in the 2nd century, and Christians were routinely fed to wild animals for entertainment. In the 3rd century, a shrine was built there to commemorate all the martyrs. That building and various ...

... and figurines in semi precious stones, there were Roman artifacts along with Nazi and Soviet relics. The Roman artifacts included coins, rings and fibulae (for holding togas together) but the provenance of all of these things was a bit dubious. After all, the rings were round pieces of rust that really could have been anything. As for Nazi and Soviet junk, I have no desire to buy anything with one of those rancid ideological symbols, but to see so many ...

... a little while but eventually found the hostel. The people running it are very friendly. What I read about VT made me envision a town like Cesky Krumlov - old town with a river running through it. Well, VT didn't have much of an old town and the river was just ok. I guess trying to compare any place to Cesky Krumlov is silly. Had dinner and went back to the hostel to see the sound and light show on Tsarevets Fortress (free from the hostel). I met a bunch of English at ...

... to be a ski instructor was that she spoke English now she is constantly trying to keep her image clear of being a shpoinka (spy), seeing as she just kind of wanders around bulgaria, asking everybody lots of questions about who owns what, especially in areas like Bansko where gangsters pretty much supplied the money to start the ski resort development a few years ago and developing right on protected national park lands glad it's her asking the ...

... you could imagine that at this point they were on a boot camp mission to get up the mountain - poor Chrissy and I weren't in the best of shape for this undertaking but we did eventually make it after many stops to catch our breath....we had to meet the boys up the top. The scenery was beautiful though and we did get to see our lakes. Apparently they ski around this area in the winter. The accommodation was a little to be desired - apparently the showers ...