Flying into Sofia was beautiful.\u00a0 I was in a great mood because I had finally gotten an hour of sleep on the plane, and when I awoke to the pilot’s announcement that we were landing, the view out my window was of green fields surrounded by a ring of moutains.\u00a0 The most imposing Mountain was still snow capped.\u00a0 We successfully made our way out of the tiny airport and found bus 84, which the travel guide promised would take us into the city.\u00a0\u00a0Unfortunately the driver didn’t announce any stops and the bus stop signs we managed to glimpse were in cyrillic.\u00a0\u00a0As we drove along, I was a bit dismayed by how\u00a0rundown everything was.\u00a0 Prior to the trip Steve had predicted a dull, depressing\u00a0city,\u00a0\u00a0but former-soviet-satellite had struck me as potentially fascinating, unique, maybe cute in its otherness.\u00a0 Driving through the outskirts, though, it seemed resoundly drab and entirely cement.\u00a0 Luckily, once we got to city center (which we did find successfully), things were more lively.\u00a0 Our hotel room does indeed overlook a collapsing concrete building-or maybe it’s in construction, hard to tell, but the streets\u00a0are vibrant and full of day to day hustle and bustle.\u00a0 I especially enjoyed the street market filled with fresh fruits, vegetables, honey,\u00a0just baked bread, and sweets galore.\u00a0 And the food is\u00a0delicious!\u00a0\u00a0Our dinner was\u00a0dish after dish\u00a0of tasty roasted\u00a0peppers, buffallo cheese, trout in vine leaves,\u00a0and on and on.\u00a0 One of my predictions\u00a0did not disappoint–the women\u00a0are dressed\u00a0as though the 80s\u00a0hadn’t ended: turquoise and\u00a0hot pink outfits, crimped hair, poofy bangs, t shirts\u00a0with palm trees and the like.\u00a0 All in all\u00a0I am delighted by the city, but it’s quite small and we’ve pretty much walked through the sights by noon.\u00a0 Tomorrow we head to Rila Monastery in the mountains.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Flying into Sofia was beautiful.\u00a0 I was in a great mood because I had finally gotten an hour of sleep on the plane, and when I awoke to the pilot’s announcement that we were landing, the view out my window was of green fields surrounded by a ring of moutains.\u00a0 The most imposing Mountain was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/thrace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}