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. 

Adventures in Asia: Istanbul, Turkiye to Sofia, Bulgaria

Yesterday was our last day in Istanbul, but we had most of the day to spend there before we traveled onward. Diana began her day in a cafe nearby the hotel, and I headed down the street to a barber for a magnificent "Ottoman" haircut, which of course involved cutting my hair, but also waxing away nose hair and singeing my ear hair with an open flame, neither of which I have previously had the pleasure of experiencing! Invigorated, I returned to the hotel to meet Diana. We went off for lunch, and after that Diana had a hammam appointment; so I dropped her off in this beautiful building . . .

. . . and then enjoyed a good long walk around Sultanahmet by myself.  

After the hammam we took it easy for awhile, reading and drinking coffee and (in my case) eating more baklava. Turkish coffee is typically served in these beautiful cups and although I do not love Turkish coffee, I love drinking coffee when it looks like this!

Eventually, before going back to the hotel to get our bags, we went for another walk, around the Topkapi Palace walls and into Gülhane Park. It was a lovely afternoon for a walk. We worked our way back to the hotel, where we picked up our bags and called a taxi. It was rush hour and traffic was brutal; the taxi took the long way around to Sirkeci Station in an attempt to avoid the worst of the traffic, but it still took an incredibly long time. Anyway, eventually we got to Sirkeci, which is where the historic train station is and where the Oriental Express used to terminate. Now, Sirkeci is under renovation, but below it you can catch the subway, which will take you many, many stops into surban Istanbul and the Halkali station.

This, now, is where the Istanbul-Sofia express begins.

Boarding began at 19:30 for the 20:00 departure. For me, it was the first sleeper train experience since I was a very little child, and I was excited (so was Diana)!

This is our couchette:

It includes a mini fridge, with a few snacks (there is no catering, but we knew this, so had brought our own food).

All made up for the night!

Unfortunately, the train has to stop for both Turkish and Bulgarian border control, and at the Turkish border you have to get off the train, so that was quite disruptive to our sleep, but otherwise the train ride was lovely. 

Adventures in Europe: Istanbul, Turkiye

We had another full day in Istanbul today, and we made it a bit of a lighter day than yesterday had been. We visited the Grand Bazaar, again, and rode the ferries across the Bosphorus, again; . . .

. . . and went back over to the Galata neighbourhood for Diana to do some more shopping, beneath the large face(s) of your friendly local president. 

I also found more opportunities to eat baklava. Anyway, the highlight of the day for me was a "proper" whirling dervish experience in a community centre in Sultanahmet. After the performance at the dinner cruise last night, I was keen to see the whirling dervishes in a more authentic setting, and this was exactly that. We had seats right by the zither player--pretty fascinating instrument!

The room was a fairly intimate space, and the ceremony lasted about an hour. 

There were three dervishes, plus the three musicians. 

Here is some video. It was a really cool experience to take in!

Adventures in Europe: Istanbul, Turkiye

Yesterday late in the morning our drive Mohammed picked us up and drove us to the Sharm El Sheikh airport, about one hour south of Dahab. On the way, Mohammed told us he has two wives, and we are inclined to think he was serious. He also took the opportunity to extol the values of multiple wives to me, but (for now at least) I will be sticking with one.

From Sharm we flew to Cairo, a quick flight, with some good views of Sinai as we took off and Cairo as we came in to land. In Cairo we had a quick layover before we transferred to our flight to Istanbul. Still, it was long enough to encounter more Egyptian incompetence, as we got stuck waiting (and waiting and waiting) for passport control to show up (the issue was not a line up of passengers, but a lack of officials). Eventually, finally, after I really pushed things by walking way past the guard, we were walked to another location to go through passport control, after our flight was flashing "last call" on the board. We made it, but I was happy to be leaving Egypt.

We landed in Istanbul as the sun was setting yesterday evening. We were through security quickly and to our hotel in the Sultanhamet neighbourhood by around 19:00. It was after dark, but the Blue Mosque was lit up and beautifully visible from the hotel's rooftop. 

The sun was rising this morning at 8:30, across the Bosphorus.

This is what the Blue Mosque looked like in the morning light.

After breakfast in the basement of our hotel, which is this one . . .

. . . we began exploring Istanbul. We visited the Blue Mosque first. 

Then we took the tram a few stops to the Grand Bazaar. 

We toured the bazaar, but passed on making any purchases, and instead headed down to Sirkeci and caught a ferry. The ferry took us over to the Asian side of Istanbul, Kadikoy, but mostly we did not care where we were going, the point was to enjoy the Bosphorus and city views!

We did not stay long in Kadikoy, instead jumping on another ferry back over to the European side, but this time Kabatas. Our ferry took us by the Maiden's Tower.

From Kabatas, we figured out where the Bosphorus dinner cruises are, because we will be doing one of those later, and then took the underground funicular up the hill to Taksim Square.

From here we headed down the wonderful Istiklal street.

We did a little shopping along the street, and also stopped for lunch, and after admiring window displays like these(!), baklava.

At Mado, they even present your coffee with a mini bouquet of flowers!

There are two churches along Istiklal, and we went inside St. Anthony of Padua catholic church.

Diana did some jewelry shopping near Galata Tower, while I did some more meandering.

Then we continued down the hill towards the Golden Horn and the Galata Bridge, which we walked across.

Our day had already been super full, but we decided we still had energy to visit the magnificent Ayasofya.

Since I last visited in 2018, Ayasofya has been converted (back) to a mosque, but the upper floor remains a museum. Tourists cannot, however, visit the ground floor any longer, although you can still get great views of it from up above. Here are some photos of around Ayasofya.

It was after 17:00 by the time we were done in Ayasofya, and sun was about to set, so we bought some drinks and went back to the hotel to enjoy them while watching the sun set over the Bosphorus.

I went out for a little nighttime walk around Sultanahamet before our dinner cruise, while Diana continued to rest in the room. I hoped to visit the Blue Mosque again, which is lit up beautifully, but no longer open to visitors in the evening. 

The dinner cruise was a bit obnoxious, and the food unimpressive, but nighttime Istanbul is beautiful.

The entertainment included a whirling dervish, and I had not seen this before so found it quite interesting.

Here is a little video:

There were also many other types of dances and some of them did a good job of getting people up and dancing as well and it was (I suppose) a fun way to spend the evening.