We’d been waiting to get to our hotel in Sofia because they have self-serve laundry :) Self-serve laundromats aren’t a thing in Türkiye, so it’s nice to have access to a washing machine for larger items like jeans.
We had a tasty breakfast in the restaurant downstairs. They do good coffees and cappuccinos too.
After breakfast, we went down to the basement level to check out the laundry facilities. It’s a combo washer and dryer, but also an eco one (which take forever). Someone else had a load going which had another 3.5 hours to go :( Looks like laundry would be an afternoon thing.
We got ourselves together and headed out sightseeing. It was a beautiful day in Sofia for walking around, about 17C and partly sunny.
The main attraction in Sofia is the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky, with its gold-plated domes. Along the way there, we passed by the Banya Bashi mosque, and the Regional History Museum of Sofia. There’s lots of grand old buildings here.
The Cathedral is surrounded by a large square, so it’s easy to get pics from all angles. The interior of the cathedral is also quite spacious and picturesque. There’s no charge to enter so we just left a small donation.
There’s a little market near the cathedral selling Soviet paraphernalia and old Cyrillic signage. I bought a martenitsa, one of the souvenirs I was hoping to find. It’s a red and white bracelet made of thread, which family and friends give to each other on March 1. It’s worn until the person sees their first flower of spring, at which point they tie it to that tree. It’s now April, so I wasn’t sure I would find any (it’s like looking for Christmas stuff in February). The lady was selling all kinds of embroidery so I figured she might have some boxed away, and sure enough she did.
We continued on our random walk, stopping into the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. It’s a smaller church with a nice flowering garden in front.
Around the centre of Sofia, some of the roads are paved with yellow bricks. They were installed in the early 20th century, as part of efforts to modernize Sofia and make it unique. The yellow cobblestones do stand out.
It’s just getting into spring here, and the tulips were in bloom everywhere. It’s nice to see, after what was a very long winter in Toronto.
We had lunch at a döner place. The owner was originally from Tunisia and asked if we spoke French after he found out we were from Canada. So we ordered our lunch in French.
It was almost raining, enough for us to open our umbrellas. Walked through a farmers’ market on the way back to the hotel. The strawberries smelled amazing so we bought some, as we had a little kitchenette in our room to wash them, and the tap water in Sofia is safe to drink. Supposedly, the water in Sofia is some of the EU’s best! [citation needed] We also bought a kilo of tangerines for breakfast for 1 EUR.
The washing machine was available when we got back to the hotel, so we did a couple quick loads. We hang-dry our clothes so it didn’t take forever in the eco washer/dryer.
Later we went down for dinner at our hotel restaurant. The kitchen is highly rated in Sofia, and it was mostly non-hotel folks at dinner. The food was excellent. We split a charcuterie board (we wanted to try the cured meats and cheeses in Bulgaria), and then Heather had a mushroom dish and I had the sea bass. Very fancy and yummy!
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