Peaky Blinders fans, where are you?! You must know a Cillian Murphy meme’s circulating on Instagram with a question: Are you a morning person or a night person? To which he replied: I’m barely even a person?
Well.. I felt that was exactly what happening to us. Oh! who is us? me and my favourite Biatch Irina! Our inbound flight started early #let’s not talk about outbound flight! -_-
This trip was my reward to myself ~ my one last holiday before starting at my new company. Irina chose Sofia, my job was simply to tag along haha if this trip hadn’t happened, I would still visit her in Amsterdam ~ stayed at her place then eating Indonesian food everyday 😉 One way or the other, I am seeing her!
Since I was preoccupied with my recent Australian Trip, I didn’t even do nothing ~ as I said, purely tag along #Facepalm. She found an amazing AirBnB, its pricier than our usual accommodation but it was absolutely worth it! We had the entire aparment to ourselves, complete with two full separate bathrooms. It’s called 5 Vintage Guest House, chose the “One-Bedroom Apartment with Garden View”. Address: 49 William Gladstone Street.
Barely Even a Person Day #Arrival
I arrived an hour and a half earlier than her, not realizing that Sofia is an hour ahead from Germany, which is enough to messed with my still on jetlag body. Since nothing was opened yet, I waited at the airport until she came to rescue me 🙂
Took U-Bahn where a good Samaritan offered her a Vitamin just because he heard she was sick the week before. We obviously didn’t take it, as a fans of true crime, we don’t accept thing from strangers.
Once we checked into our beautiful AirBnB, we did absolutely nothing except grabbed food at a wonderfully kitschy restaurant called Shtastlivetsa Vitoshka~ the kind that reminds you of a fancy old grandma’s house ~ I had an amazing Veal toung there. Afterward, we hit the supermarket for snacks for our following trip then watch The Nanny on Amazon Prime after several attempts on fighting the Audio which was defaulted to French.
Repeating Barely Even a Person Day #Strike two
We had a packed schedule in front of us. Iri bought the perfect 3 in 1 day trip:
Boyana Church
The Frescoes inside the church were still legit! It’s good to see that some places really took care about preservation. They only allow 8 people inside for no more than 10 Minutes to maintain humidity.
Our guide Lubo explained the imagery at the top of the church is always God in the center watching over and guiding us. Even though photo isn’t allowed inside, you can see similar frescoes in other churches around Sofia.
It’s a very small church, entrance fee is 10 Euro, no timeslot, it’s consider inexpensive compare to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. I’d say do it! otherwise what are you gonna do anyway. The park around it is very small.
Rilla Monastery
Wow! Magnificent! + located at the mountain, so breezy. Inside the Monastery is very beautiful, again, no photo. Behind it, there is a small Cafe for breakfast ~ the choices aren’t that broad, ordered a big round bread to share while Irina add a plate of Cheese. Some says to have a Yoghurt there, neither of us did. Later on Irina tried from the supermarket but she wasn’t convinced.
The Cave
Saint Ivan of Rila, he was a monk stays in this cave for about 10 years before his followers built the church. Super dark, we had to turn on our mobile flashlight, tiny too. While we were queuing, Irina’s main takeaway was being amazed that the cave doesn’t have rats haha, focus yo! There’s a very tiny stairs where it was believed or joked by our guide that if we pass through that hole, use the stairs to climb to the other side, meaning you are born again, the hole has washed all our sins.
The hike itself is quite something, full of rocks therefore you really need to watch your step. It doesn’t take that long maybe only 25 minutes up and down.
When we got back to the city, we decided to get dinner at Ribs Brothers, it was so good! After being told that some of the main roads would be closed the next day for Sofia Marathon, we took advantage of the evening to walk around the city while we still could.
Sofia is beautiful! It has lots to offer considering their compact size.