SUMMER TRIP #2: SOFIA, Bulgaria
Leaving Italy behind me (for the time being), I flew to Bulgaria on July 18th from Pisa's airport, courtesy of a cheap Ryan Air flight.
I had never been to Bulgaria before, but I had heard enough good things about Sofia and I was not disappointed.
Even if Sofia is a capital, and enjoys all the perks this status confers to a city (a fully functioning airport, a state of the art metro, a thriving nightlife...) it remains quite a small town by Western Standard, meaning you can enjoy its streets and discover it by walking around.
Of course, there are a lot of remains of the Communist era, like the monument to the Soviet army.
And you have also the massive National Palace of Culture, a king-size congress center opened in 1981, at the sunset of the communist rule which looks like an alien vessel has just landed.
If you have the opportunity (and you are a boy interested in such matters), try a detour to the Museum of the Army, which has an open-air collection of tanks, helicopters and fighter planes:
But of course the culture has a huge place in Sofia as well, that's why I was really impressed by the National Gallery:
It has a great collection of national works by Bulgarian painters like these (but not only) and I have always found that - in summer - museums are the best place to keep cool while outside the sun is scorching everything:
But the really awesome piece of architecture is really the Alexandre Nevsky cathedral, with its golden dome.
Its construction was started in 1882 to commemorate the Russian soldiers who had fallen during the war against the Ottomon empire to liberate Bulgaria.
No photos allowed inside, but it's not a big loss, because like all Orthodox churches it's quite dark and I had not the good camera to capture it as best as I could.
Sofia has also quite a lot of other XIXth centuries-style building, like the Ivan Vazov theater, which welcomed me with an open-air concert:
They have made a great effort to renovate and modernize the city center obviously, going as far as closing the Vitosha boulevard to the cars, and devoting it totally to pedestrians... Which means it is THE place to go on weekend to party and enjoy the life.
That's why I HAD TO TREAT MYSELF A WHITE RUSSIAN. The texture and colours were a bit unusual compared with the cocktail I usually get in Spain, but it was strong and good:
At the end of that first complete day in Sofia, I was however a bit at a loss to know what to do because I had done most of the thing one is supposed to see in Sofia. So, I decided to take my Airbnb host to her word and go for PLOVDIV, the second city of Bulgaria, close to Greece.
To be continued