Julie, Delphine, Lies and Sofie in Sofia!

Sofia, a city which Sofie couldn’t wait to visit! Actually, we all couldn’t wait to visit it. We had heard a lot of great things about the city and now we are about to explore it!

Sofia is the 17^th largest city by population in the European Union with a population of 1.3 million people and 1.4 million metropolitan population. Sofia is located at the foot of the mountain Vitosha and is ranked as a Beta world city (a global city).

We also learned that Sofia’s mayor is Yordanka Fandakova as we passed city hall.

The first thing we visited was the Sofia City Art Gallery housing numerous pieces of Bulgarian art. Next up was the Sts. Cyril and Methodius National Library which houses the largest national book collection and is Bulgaria’s oldest cultural institute.

As the day had passed really quickly and we were tired of our journey, we decided on going back to the hotel, relaxing a little and then washing up for dinner. After enjoying a wonderful meal, we went out to look for a bar or a pub to have something to drink and close the day with. We encountered a  ‘mehani’, a Bulgarian traditional tavern. The word ‘mehani’ comes from the Turkish word ‘meyhane’, ‘mey’ means ‘wine’ and ‘hane’ means ‘house’. In the picture you see people dancing in the ‘mehani’, we didn’t participate because of the weird people in there.

The next day we took the bus to visit the Museum of Earth and Men. (All areas are well covered by public transport although a lot of vehicles are in a poor condition.) Arriving at the Museum of Earth and Men, we were a bit disappointed. We thought it would have shown us the history of earth and men, and it did, but not in the way we’d expected it to be. 

The museum was full with minerals and things of which we couldn’t make up what it exactly was, although they were very pretty. We figured we'd miscalculated big time! We had to inform ourselves better next time because now we’d lost money for the bus and for the fee to enter the museum. Bummer!

Anyhow, we decided to walk around town the next day to explore the city some more and realized that we’d seen it all after 2 days. So we packed our bags and took off for Romania. The next city in the European Union which we just entered!

Thanks for still following us!

Love,

Julie