Luxury in Bulgaria

Exploring the monastary was very fun. It was great to be in a monastary that is still filled with monks. Since we woke up in the monastary itself, we were pretty much the only tourists there in the morning. The Church of the Nativity was amazing and it is covered with murals of biblical scenes on both the inside and outside walls. Inside the church we felt like we were intruding a little as we were the only ones (at first) who were not monks. Like other Orthodox churches it was quite dark inside (in comparison with Latin churchs) and everywhere you looked there were pictures of saints and angels. Bulgaria's holiest relic is here, its the left hand of St Ivan of Rila. According to our guide book the right hand was taken on a tour of Russia to raise funds for the monastary!



We made our way to Sofia next. I had not thought that pot holes and bad roads were to be as prevalent as they were in Bulgarias capital. The weirdest bit was that some of the main roads towards the centre were cobbled (driving along them at full speed is very bumpy). We parked up and quickly found a bankomat to aquire some funds of our own. We visited the two big churchs/cathedrals, the Sveta Nedelya and Aleksander Nevski, which were amazing for their huge domed cupolas (Aleksander Nevski has golden domes!). We even managed to catch the changing of the guards at the President's Building. The lonely planet described it as "boot sole-slapping" and I wanted to find out why! Turns out they walk a few steps normally and then a few steps of swinging their legs up high and slapping them down on the ground really loud. Not as huge a fanfare as the Buckingham Palace guards but still very cool (and they don't look nearly as ridiculous either).





We're now up in Vratsa which is up near the Balkan mountains. We didn't know where to stay so we just rocked up to this really flash hotel in the centre of town and found that a double room is only 70 leva! Thats less than we normally pay for two beds in most hostel dorms! Ah, hotel rooms with air-con and a view up to the mountains, I could get used to this! :)

Update: We just went out to dinner and had two courses and wine for just 20 euros, definitely living it up :D