Today was a weird day.

The tour to Rila Monastery was weird, the tour of the Boyana Church was weird, and the new accommodation we moved into tonight was weird.

So, let’s start at the beginning, shall we…

Rila Monastery

We booked a combined tour of both the Rila Monastery and Boyana Church today.

Normally I try to do things on my own and avoid doing tours but, from a cost perspective, it was pretty much the same price doing the tour.

In addition, with the tour, we were guaranteed air conditioning on our bus as well as an additional stop at Boyana Church.

So, at 9:00 we met up with 15 other people and we were on our way 2 hours south of Sofia.

Our tour guide, while knowing his stuff, would drone on and on about something until your eyes glazed over.

To top it off though, he’d then repeat the whole thing in Spanish because there were a handful of Spanish people on our bus.

He’d also repeat things or clarify things just a little too much.

You’d like an example?

Well, sure!

There was a waterfall on a path outside of the Monastery.   I asked him a simple question about how much time it took to get to the waterfall.   You know, I just wanted to know if it was a short walk or a long walk.   Was it 10 minutes or 30 minutes.

Well, his answer was this…

“It takes about 6 minutes to get there but if you walk fast, it’s 4 minutes and if you walk slow, it’s 8 minutes and it takes longer if you take pictures and it’s uphill coming back so it takes longer.

Yup, that run on sentence actually came out of his mouth.

Anyway, on to the Rila Monastery.

Like the Bachkovo Monastery we visited a couple of days ago, everywhere you looked was beautiful.

The artwork, the murals, the architecture and the landscapes were worthy of so many photos.

We did, in fact, take that walk down to see the waterfall and tiny church at the end of the path.   It was nice to just stroll into nature like that.

At 1pm, our group loaded back onto our bus and went for lunch.

Today I tried another Bulgarian dish, Kavarma, which is a pork and vegetable stew.   A very hearty meal and the side of potatoes I had with it could possibly be the best potatoes I’ve ever had.

I’m not even exaggerating.   They were done in garlic butter and herbs and melted in your mouth.

Boyana Church

I didn’t know much about Boyana Church as I hadn’t planned on visiting it and only was because it was part of this tour.

Turns out, I wouldn’t have missed much.

The tiny church only fits about a dozen people and, for that reason, they limit your visit there to 10 minutes.   You also can’t take photos of anything inside or have your backpacks on.

There was literally a guy hovering over us the whole time waiting for someone to snap a photo so he could yell at us.

Our guide on the bus actually took longer to explain the rules (in English and Spanish of course) than the actual visit itself.

I mean, it was a cute little church with great wall murals but I certainly wouldn’t have planned a separate trip to go see it.

Our tour ended around 5:30 so we headed back to the hostel we had stayed at last night.

We needed to pick up our bags that we had stored there today and move onto our new accommodation

New accommodation

I found this new accommodation at the last minute a couple of nights ago while searching for a replacement for the hostel I had booked but subsequently found bad reviews for.

The place is actually an apartment to ourselves with air conditioning, laundry and everything else you could hope for when you’re at home.

It is a little further out of the main part of the city but a metro station is just a 10 minute walk from the place so it wasn’t super inconvenient.

We arrived at 6pm and found our key in a keycode box outside the building.

After following the instructions the owner had emailed me, we opened the door to our new home for the next 3 days.

It was a cozy little apartment with a new look to it.

We looked around for a bit and soon became aware that there was no bedroom.

The online listing had listed a bedroom as “1 sofa bed” and also the living room as “1 sofa bed”.   Yup, dude found a loophole to make people think they had rented a one bedroom apartment instead of a studio.

Normally, it wouldn’t be a huge deal except we’re two grown men and we ain’t sleeping in the same bed.

Luckily the sofa bed in the living room is a pretty good size so we set it up with a big buffer zone in between us.

As for the rest of the night, we went out to dinner, played some cards for a bit, and then called it a night.

The next two days are the last two that Nathan and I will be traveling together.   He’ll be flying home in 3 days and I’ll be moving on solo over to New Macedonia to continue the last 3 weeks of my 6 week trip.

It’s crazy to think I’m only coming up to the halfway mark of this trip.   I feel like we’ve done so much in the last 3 weeks that it’s hard to imagine doing another 3 weeks but I guess that’s backpack life for ya.