My last destination in Eastern Europe!  I’m here in Veliko Tarnovo, the old medieval capital of Bulgaria (before it moved to Sofia in the 19th Century).  It’s in the green, forested mountains of the central north part of the country, and its setting is quite dramatic (and not dissimilar to Luxembourg City).  The pretty, Read More

Crap name, cool city.  Plovdiv is the city that Sofia isn’t – a manageable size, clean, green, and generally "nice".  It’s a few hours east of the capital and I desperately needed to get out of Sofia so I made a beeline stright for it.  I checked into a hostel and then went for, Read More

While Sofia can definitely be missed, Rila Monastery should not be!  It would have to be one of my highlights of the trip thus far.  Rila Monastery is a functioning Orthodox monastery tucked deep in the lush, green mountains a few hours south of Sofia (built there so that the Ottomans wouldn’t find it, Read More