Sofia was full of friendly people, delicious food and a great hike. We flew in Friday evening and picked up a hire car to head into the city centre to check into our hostel. Afterwards it was straight off to find a good restaurant to gorge ourselves on Bulgarian food and wine. With Bulgaria once being part of the Ottoman Empire, it shares a lot of similar foods to Turkey. This was most noticeable in the delicious grilled meat skewers, salads with white cheeses and baklava.
On Saturday morning we had a bit of a sleep in and started our hike later than expected, hitting the trail head around 10am, making our way towards the summit of Mount Musala, the tallest mountain in Bulgaria at 2,925m. The mountain is a ski resort in winter and so we followed the steep ski slopes upwards, threading our way under chairlifts and past mountain huts. The temperatures on the mountain had been around zero the last few days and they’d had a fresh fall of snow higher up the night before. We continued up above the snowline, crunching our way through the few inches of fresh powder on the ground. The views were beautiful, looking down at half frozen lakes hidden in back valley bowls, all the while keeping an eye on the observatory at the peak in the distance and the other mountain ranges around us. The pace continued to slow as we clambered over slippery rocks, their gaps and crevices hidden by the snow. We finally stopped for lunch around 2pm, knowing we had only a couple hours of sunlight left and at least another 45minutes to the summit, we decided to let the mountain defeat us and gobbled down our food before turning around and heading back down, racing the dwindling sunlight.
We got back to the car just as it was getting dark (good decision to turn around), stripped off our wet shoes and socks and headed back towards Sofia. We had a dinner booking at a fancy restaurant in the city centre where we shared numerous dishes and a bottle of wine.
On Sunday we went for a free walking tour around Sofia, learning all about its history and culture. A delicious lunch at a trendy café and then a relaxing afternoon massage before going back to the airport.
