On to Bulgaria

On to Bulgaria

Sofia, Bulgaria, Europe

I got up this morning and went out to explore Thessaloniki for a few hours. I found out that there were two buses from Thessaloniki up to Sofia, and I’d be better off getting the early one. So I walked around the city for a few hours, checked out the Byzantine Museum and the statue of Alexander the Great, and then made my way to the bus terminal. I got my ticket for the 2:30pm bus to Sofia and made sure I would not get a seat in the back row again.

While waiting for the bus I met a Dutch mother and daughter who are travelling around Europe for three weeks. They are coming up to Sofia tonight too, but are getting the later bus. We exchanged information and will hopefully get together tomorrow for lunch or something. None of us really know what to expect from Sofia.

The bus ride was a lot nicer than I had expected. It was a five-hour ride, I had two seats to myself, and each seat had their own TV in the headrest so I was able to watch movies the whole time. It had a few different channels and there were always at least two movies in English on at all times. I watched “This Is The End”, “After Earth”, and “Iron Man 3”. They wouldn’t have been my first three choices, but it was a nice change from reading the whole time.

The countryside driving through Bulgaria was pretty nice, but I’m not overly impressed with Sofia. It may still be too early to pass judgment just yet, but it doesn’t look like a very pleasant city. I just left my guest house, which is right across the street from the bus station, to get a bite to eat. It doesn’t appear to be the nicest area, and the first thing I saw when walking to find something to eat was a drunk guy pissing and throwing up at the same time on the sidewalk. Lovely.

I found a place that sold pizza by the slice and was impressed to get a huge slice of pizza and a bottle of juice for 2 Bulgarian Leva (£1). Hopefully everything else here is as cheap! I’m moving to a different hostel tomorrow. This place I am staying in tonight is not nice at all, which is a shame because it had a really good review on Booking.com. The place tomorrow is a dorm room I’ll be staying in, so hopefully there’s more of a chance I’ll meet some people there. That’s most of the fun in travelling after all!

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