The only reason I went to Budapest was to be able to get a cheap flight to Sofia since I couldn’t pass through Serbia because I needed ...

Sofia

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The only reason I went to Budapest was to be able to get a cheap flight to Sofia since I couldn’t pass through Serbia because I needed a visa. So, my first time in Sofia was a quick night stop on my way to Macedonia but still managed to go out and check out a little bit of the city. My hostel was like 2 km from the main area so I decided to walk and see what I could find.

I walked along a main road until I got to a beautiful park with a nice fountain, people walking around and teenagers skating. I found a small piece of the Berlin wall, and a communist monument.





When I got to the end of the park I was very impressed by what I saw, at the top of buildings there were big Coca-Cola, Subway, and Mc Donald’s signs and I wondered if this was going to be a western fast food influenced country and guess what? It was. 


On my second visit to Sofia I took the free walking tour and was able to piece together what I had seen on my first day and understand Bulgaria  a little bit better.

There was a lot of history and blah blah blah about the different empires that came to bulgaria such as the ottoman, lots of dates, and a lot of information that came into one ear and went out the other. The two things that I remember are that Bulgarians kind of didn't care about their old buildings and just constructed things on top of other and it wasn't until recently that they started kind of preserving and re construction some of it. For example, the found some ruins and still decided to build a metro station on it, or how a hotel found an old Roman Amphitheater and instead of stopping construction, now you can find a small piece of the amphitheater at the bottom of the hotel.

The new metro station is on the left!

Part of the Roman Amphitheater


The other thing that I remember, and my favorite part about Bulgaria, was that during WWII there were zero Jews killed! The government kind of didn't want to send people to the concentration camps and every time that Hitler called to see when the Jewish people were going to be sent the government made excuses to keep them such as they are working on the rail roads etc. At the end of the war no Jews from Bulgaria were killed, making them the only country that preserved their entire Jewish population!

The photo below is from the square of Tolerance; we did a 360 turn and we could see a mosque, a synagogue, and an orthodox church, meaning that all religions are accepted and tolerated. 


Near the square of Tolerance there was a statue of Saint Sofia (no, that's not why Sofia is called Sofia, it has nothing to do with this lady!) but where she stands used to be a statue of Lenin, I guess there is no tolerance for him!





  From there we kept walking and seeing the different sights that Sofia had to offer, we even drank some hot spring egg smelling water from where the baths used to be!


This used to be a Bath house!


And stopped at the St Rotunda Church, one of the oldest buildings in the world!




National Theater


We finished the tour at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, probably the most famous place in Sofia. On my first stop in Sofia I accidentally ended up in front of it and I had no idea it existed so I was just so impressed by the beauty of the building. I got to go inside and it was, as any other Orthodox church, full of beautiful frescos. It was late in the afternoon and they were almost closing but I sat inside there for about 20 minutes taking it all in when all of a sudden the choir started practicing! It was beautiful! I closed my eyes while I sat on the bench and listened to the choir's angelic voices, it was such a nice experience!


At the tour I met Nicole, my roommate at the hostel, and decided to go together to the local market and have some food. Of course I ended up buying almost a kilo and cherries and eating them all! The fresh produce is just so good!




As always, I just loved walking the streets with no set direction and open to being surprised.



I just loved the look of that building!


From my hostel I followed the tram tracks and ended up in an edgier neighborhood with a lot of street art and reminded me of San Francisco!
Apparently they love to paint the electricity boxes!


This is by far my favorite!





Many people said Sofia wasn't all that great but I thought it was a nice place to visit :)
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About Post Author

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!

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About me




Hi! It's me... Andrea!

In this blog you can live vicariously through my journey around the world!

Please feel free to share tips or places to go!
Contact me: andreaheartstraveling@gmail.com