Bulgarian Vacation Day 1 and 2

We have the great privaledge of taking a  10 day vacation in Bulgaria.  We will be spending 5 days in the mountains and 5 days on the seaside.  I am going to try to update every couple of days.
TRAVEL

As many of you know we do not have a car but we were able to drive for this trip.  I must say for my first European driving expereince to be on a long road trip, it was a little daunting.  All in all it was nice.  The roads were pretty smooth for the most part.  We did detour off the main highway to see a montesary, and had the adventure of crossing a birdge, not wide enough for two cars.  The girls were great and just enjoyed being in the car and having AC.  Radio was only Serbian so after a while we just shut it off.  We were super thankful to have the car.

THE SIGHTS

We decided to turn our one day trip into two so we could see some of the southern part of our country as well as reduce an all day drive.  We were able to stop at a montasary in the south.  It was built at the end of the 1300's by Despot Stefan ( he was the ruler of Serbia and given this title by the Occupying Turks).  It was built like a fortress with a church in the middle.  The fresco's were done in Byzantium Blue (1 kg of paint worth 1kg of Gold) and the yellow paint had gold in it.  Our guide said when you walked in the whole church was "blue and gold like heaven".  It was beautiful 600 years later, I can't imagine at the time how it must have looked.  After this it was just a three hour drive through the country.  It was amazing, mountains, tunnels through mountains, sheep and goats on the side of the road - with shepherds of course. Tiny little villages.  We had never seen anything like this.  Jennifer and the girls really loved the scenery, I was trying to drive and just listened to descriptions.


SOFIA
This is the capital of Bulgaria.  We wanted to stay the night here so I took a chance on an internet hotel deal which turned out to be great.  Cheap, clean, right on the city center, and most importantly very close to DUNKIN DONUTS.  We had a great time walking the center and in one block we were able to see an Orthodox Cathedral, Mosque, Catholic Church, and Synagouge.  Very diverse.  We finished our morning at Dunkin Donuts and it was glorious!!!!

We got there a little early and Mac was not happy because we had to wait.