Bulgaria, part I - Sofia (i)

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the second biggest cathedral (or so they say) in the world

I am absolutely whipped from work and my brain is sludge. I really need to start going to bed earlier, I'm not doing myself any favours by going to bed late. On the bright side, only three days to go.

About an hour later. I'm feeling slightly better now. Am rather looking forward to England versus Colombia, although if James Rodriguez isn't playing I might not watch after all.

Sofia. My plane arrived at 8ish in the evening. Thank heavens for long summer evenings, because Sofia is not the sort of place I want to arrive at in the dead of the night. Unfortunately as it was, it was already getting dark when we touched down. I was slightly freaking out but gripped hard at my courage, as I do.

Athens to Sofia

Metro station for Sofia Airport

The annoying thing about Sofia Airport is that most low cost carriers, including Wizzair of course, stop at Terminal 1, whilst the metro leaves from Terminal 2. I didn't know this beforehand because the plane ticket didn't go into detail about which terminal they would arrive at, also Sofia Airport isn't really the sort of airport you expect to have loads of terminals. Even more annoyingly, the terminals were so far away from each other that you had to take a bus to get from one terminal to the other, and you had to pay after 8pm. I coughed up - it wasn't expensive, but was still annoying - along with all the other passengers.

The metro was fairly easy to navigate, although undoubtedly Eastern European, and by the time I arrived at my station, Lavov Most (Bulgarian for Lion Bridge), it was completely dark. The street lights here are virtually non existent even though it's right in the middle of the city centre. I found my hostel eventually, but was so uncomfortable with it that I spent most of the evening googling other places to stay in, but unfortunately Sofia was fully booked, so I was obliged to stay there. Sofia the city was quite beautiful even though it was, again, far too hot - but the hostel somewhat ruined my stay there.

The yucky hostel

Lavov Most by day, which was quite nice, but this place turns into a real ghetto when night falls