It rained quite heavily during the night and according to our phones the temperature was below freezing overnight. Duke had hoped to have a massage at the Orbita Hotel Spa this morning. Unfortunately he couldn’t get an appointment before 2pm. So we will look for another opportunity.

Hotel breakfast buffets are very different from country to country. I think you will know you are in the Balkans when every breakfast buffet includes cucumbers and very tasty tomatoes.

Even though we don’t read or even guess at what Bulgarian writing means the signs for the cheese made it clear what kind of cheeses these were.

From Blagoevgrad we drove through the mountains to Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second biggest city, and according to Rock Steves, its most beautiful. We are staying near the airport so we won’t see the historic center until tomorrow. The nice thing about being in a more upscale part of town is that we get to see more of middle class Bulgarian life. We went to a store near our hotel to get a few snacks and a big bottle of water. It tuned out to be what looked like the Bulgarian equivalent of out Costco.

There is a German restaurant right next to our hotel. We ate dinner there. It was great and we really enjoyed their home brewed beer and the tasty food.

When you order you never know quite what you are going to get. It’s part of the fun of travel.

After breakfast this morning we took a taxi to the airport and picked up a rental car. We left Sofia and drove about two hours to Rila Monastery. It is described as the cultural center of Bulgaria. It was founded over a thousand years ago. The sign at the entrance describes it as the Jerusalem of Bulgaria.

From the Monastery we drove to nearby Blogoevgrad, to the Orbita Hotel and Spa where we are tonight. We used the spa and had a great dinner in the restaurant.

The hotel we are staying at in Sofia, Art ‘Otel, is great. They have a very nice happy hour in the lounge from 6 to 8. They have delivered desert to our room every night, and our room is spacious and comfortable. At breakfast his morning the man supervising breakfast told us all about the history of Bulgaria.

Today we explored a bit of Sofia. we stopped at the Archaeological Museum. One of the exhibits explained that at the Karanova Tell the digging has gone down over 40 feet with successive settlements over 4 millennia.

We also walked by the Presidential Palace and went into the Cathedral of Saint Nedelya.

We spent last night at a very nice hotel, Hotel Ring, in Kyustendil, Bulgaria. For breakfast this morning we went out to find coffee and pastry. It was a beautiful morning and many stalls were setting up for the continuation of the Spring festival that we visited yesterday.

About eleven we checked out and walked to the bus station where we caught a bus to Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia. In Sofia we took a taxi to our hotel.

Both of us are fighting colds. It is very frustrating! We napped and rested most of the afternoon. We did make a trip to the grocery store for water and snacks.

Today we caught an 8:30 am bus out of Notth Macedonia into Bulgaria. Bulgaria is a new country for each of us

In Kyustendil we walked to our hotel. There is a spring festival going on so after a bit of a rest we went out to check it all out.

There was lots of great looking food. We chose some and had dinner.