Day 18 - 06/07/23

 Incredibly busy day for Sam today. Woke up at the crack of dawn because I’m right next to a gigantic window and the sunlight was beaming in my face. It was worth it for the fantastic view though.

We shortly headed off and got some breakfast at a local shop. I know I should’ve been responsible and gotten a pastry or something, but it was a boiling day and the Oreo ice creams were too tempting. We got on the metro and made our way to the cathedral. It was impressive, but after journeying in Europe for the last 2-3 weeks I’ve seen many many cathedrals, so the magnificence kind of deteriorates!

There’s also lots of dogs in Sofia, so I included a nice picture of them relaxing in the shade. We then went to a place called ‘The Red Flat’, which was an 80s flat that had been untouched since the communist era, which was incredibly interesting. It actually looked lots nicer than my first year university flat so I’m not sure what they were complaining about. I found out that the reason why certain Eastern European football clubs have ‘Locomotiv’ or ‘CSKA’ at the beginning of their name is because during the Soviet era, clubs were owned by different parts of the government, so ‘Locomotiv’ clubs were owned by the railway branch and ‘CSKA’ clubs were owned by the army!

We then headed back for lunch/dinner and a nap, I had some sausage noodles (with vegetables too, don’t worry Mum). We then headed out for our night out.

We began at this normal bar, the service was very slow so we ordered two Stellas each, which the waiter found very amusing. The beers were disgusting though, they were so sweet for some reason? I felt like I was drinking cider. Afterwards we went to this incredible bar that was only lit by candles! It looked very cool, and it was surprisingly cheap, probably due to the tiny electricity bill they have!

We then went to an even COOLER bar. It was kind of like a speakeasy which had an interesting door where you had to figure out some puzzle in order to get in!

 The keys had numbers on them, and after about 10 minutes of trying (and failing) one of the barmen came back from his smoke break and just let us in. It was very cool and fancy, so I decided that an Old Fashioned was the drink to go with, as I channeled my inner Don Draper. I have to say, I don’t remember much from this point onwards in the night, so I think I’ll end this post here!