Sofia Day 2 + Rila Monastery

So now we're safe in Transylvania. We're not armed with wooden stakes. Maybe we should. Maybe.

Anyway, our second day in Bulgaria was spent doing one of the hostel's side trips to the Rila Monastery. The Rila Monastery is a UNESCO World Heritage site is and is this excluded monastery up in the Rila Mountain. The tour basically got us someone to drive us directly to the monastery, which having been there, would have been hellish to do via public transportation. There were three of us signed up for the tour: Mia, me and some guy named James who sounded like Daniel Radcliffe. The drive out to the Rila Monastery took about two hours, but there was a stop over at a gas station.

Before we got to the Rila Monastery, our tour guide stopped us somewhere else in the mountains to go see a cave that St. Ivan used to live in. It was a funny moment because Mia slept for pretty much the entire ride to the monastery and she woke up for a very sweaty uphill hike. She was clearly thrilled. The hike was a lot longer than I initially thought when he said he was taking us to a cave. We pretty much got out of the car and he pointed to this giant hill and said we're climbing up that. It wasn't too bad. The cave was pretty cool too, but there was this tiny hole at some point that we were expected to squeeze through. I declined  as the only image in my head was of Winnie the Pooh.

After climbing back down the hill, he drove us to the Rila Monastery and left us there for a few hours. The monastery is very pretty. It used to house like 300 monks, but according to some tour guide we were listening to there are only like six monks living there. Apparently, those few monks aren't too lonely because they rent out some of the rooms as a hotel.

In any case, there was also a giant church in the middle of the monastery. From the outside, it looks like the rest of the monastery, but it was incredibly ornate on the inside. I'd post pictures, but we weren't allowed to take them inside. Judging from all of the paintings all over the interior, I can understand why.

Even though the monastery was very pretty, we were left there for two and a half hours and there's really only so much of the monastery that you can see in that time. We were all kind of hungry, though, so we got some food. Tried some monastery-style bean soup (good) and some Bulgarian beer (not so good). For dessert, we got Bulgarian donuts that the woman at the hostel had been raving about. That was entertaining because there was a large selection of different syrup flavors to try out.

After eating, we wandereed around the monastery for a little wihle longer, before finding our tour guide and heading back to Sofia. The driver stopped at some point to buy some fruit and gave us some. Other than that, it was a pretty awkward and quiet ride back.

We got back to the hostel around 4:30 and hung out at the hostel for a little while because it was deadly hot. We went out for dinner around 6 before coming back, grabbing our bags and heading to the train station. That was fun. We had like 5 dollars worth of Bulgarian money to spend and nothing to spend it on because we had already gone to the market. I think we got Snickers bars or something.

The overnight train that we took to Bucharest had a final destination in Moscow. That was kind of fun. We had a sleeping compartment and were the only people in the compartment. It wasn't as big or comfortable as the one that we took to Belgrade, but the door also didn't make noises the whole night and I actually managed to sleep. They took our passports for a while, but we eventually got them back.

Sofia

We rolled into Sofia, Bulgaria tired, smelly, and hungry. The train station wasn't welcoming either. We almost got run over by some street cleaner. Our first priority was to make sure that we were indeed in a sleeper for our overnight train tomorrow. We got tossed around from ticketing office to ticketing office until we got to the right one and confirmed that we were in a sleeper. Ideally, we'll luck out and there will only be the two of us again, but who knows. Unlike the Budapest train, this is the only train that goes from Sofia to Bucharest. At least we get beds.

Also, trains in Eastern Europe make Italian trains seem prompt. This one arrived three hours late. While we're training into Bucharest tomorrow, we're ultimately trying to get to Brasov that day. At Budapest, they told us that we didn't have to make reservation for the Brasov train. I was going to do it anyway, but it migth be better that I don't. Who knows when we're going to arrive in Bucharest on Wednesday morning.

Anyway, we got out of the train station and everything smelled like pee. We had to make our way through a million taxi drivers and peole advertising hostels before we made it to the tram. The area of Sofia that we saw on our tram ride reminded us of some of the less touristy areas of Mexico. There were definitely some dirt roads and the streets were not completely done or in disrepair. That might have been fine, but add the rows of communist-era architecture and you'll get our first impression of Sofia.

We finally made it to the hostel. It's a pretty cute hostel, but because we got a private two bed room, we're in an apartment a couple streets away. Thus, we did not get to partake in the free pool table because we did not want to have to wake in the dark Sofia streets more than we had to :(. Anyway, we checked in, but they told us that it'd take a couple of hours for the room to be ready. We had the option of doing an 11 am free walking tour, but we were too tired hungry and gross feeling to do that. Instead, we sat around and hung out in the hostel. We also dug into the bag of mini croissants that we bought in Belgrade. They weren't that good, but we made them better with the packet of knock off Nutella that we also got.

Our room was supposed to be ready at 2, but it ended up being ready at 12. This was great. We showered. They do a laundry service here for 8 lav (equivalent of 4 Euro), so we decided that our train clothes from the past few days either needed to be burned or washed, so we went back to drop that off, pay for our room, and book ourselves in the tour of the Rila Monastery that they put on. Once that was done, we ran back to the room for the much needed sleep.

We were up and out by 5 and decided to do the 6 pm run of the free walking tour that we missed earlier in the day. This was a very tough decision for us. Included in the hostel price, they'll make you pasta for dinner. But that only happens from 7-8. On the other hand, this tour lasted from 6-8:30. We almost tried to do both and were going to leave the tour an hour into it, but we actually ultimately really liked the walking tour. The Sofia we saw on the tour was a lot nicer than what we had seen in the morning. There are a lot of underground Roman ruins in the city, so when our tour guide would take us to the subway area, you'd just see old walls all around. There are a lot of really pretty churches scattered around the city, some of them going back to the 11th century. The biggest church and the one pictured below is the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. It was huge. We saw a palace, the president's building (but just missed the changing of the guard). The tour guide was pretty funny too. 

Oh, another cool thing about Sofia is that they have a lot of mineral springs all over the city. It's completely safe to drink, so we got to fill up with some natural mineral water.

The tour ended around 8:30, right after the dinner. :( All in all, though, we were glad that we did the tour because we saw a lot more of Sofia and did a lot more than we would have otherwise.

Tomorrow we check out and we take an overnight train to Bucharest. Instead of having an awkward day, though, we're doing the hostel's tour of the Rila Monastery which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We could have taken public transportation to the monastery and it would have been a lot cheaper, but seeing as they only have three trains to and from Rila each day and the trains we've encountered so far have not been particularly reliable, I think the private transport is the safest bet. It's also a pretty long drive to and from the monastery, so we've got a full day ahead of us.