Adventures in Europe: Sofia, Bulgaria

We woke up this morning on the Istanbul-Sofia express train with rural Bulgaria passing by outside of our window.

It was just before 11:00 when we arrived at the Sofia train station.

From here we caught the metro a couple of stops to our hotel, the Sofia Balkan Palace. This is a nice hotel, but actually not terribly expensive, plus after a night on the train and the last night before Diana heads home, it felt well worth it.

The hotel was not able to check us in yet, but we could leave our luggage and then headed out down the block to find some coffee. The Bulgarian National Assembly building is right around the corner from the hotel's front door (and the presidential palace is actually part of the same building as our hotel, just along the wall there to the right in the photo below).

After coffee we went on another two blocks to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. I was here in 2018 as well and absolutely loved it, and it was, not surprisingly, still very beautiful!

We visited the cathedral, and also the very good iconography museum in the basement. Then, we headed for lunch, where we decided we would try to visit mineral baths this afternoon. First, though, we did a little more of a walk, past the 6th century Basilica of Saint Sofia . . .

. . . the Church of St Nicholas the Miraclemaker . . .

. . . the Central Mosque . . .

. . . and the former city baths, now the Regional History Museum. 

After checking into the hotel, we took a taxi to the Sofia suburb of Bankya. Here, there is a lovely park . . .

. . . and a nicely restored baths. I did not get a picture of the building's exterior today, but this is apparently what it looked like just a few years ago! 

Here is the mineral breakdown for the Central Mineral Bath water. I do not know anything about the mineral content of water, so the list is largely meaningless to me.

I took a picture of the main pool surreptitiously from the men's change room up above. 

We spent a couple of lovely hours at the baths, then headed out, this time opting to ride the bus out of Bankya and to the metro, and then via metro back to the hotel. Something I found interesting about the metro that I have never seen before are these retractable fences that come down when the train leaves and go up when it arrives. 

We got back to the hotel after dark.

Although it is dark and somewhat cold, there were plenty of people out, especially along Vitosha Boulevard, where even in January most of the restaurants have outdoor patios, albeit covered and enclosed and with portable heaters. We headed into Hadjidraganov's Cellars for our dinner, however, which was inside and downstairs. We shared this magnificent spread of grilled meats and such.