It rained today for the first time in 3 weeks on this trip.

Not a bad day to just sleep in and do nothing if you ask me.

Nathan got up early and decided to go out and explore some museums.

Me?

Oh, I just stayed in bed.

I mean, really, this was probably the only time for the remainder of my trip when I’ll have a whole apartment to myself.

Might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Sushi

Okay, I did eventually get my ass out of bed and out the door but it wasn’t until noon.

There was a sushi place I had marked on my map that was mostly gluten free plus they had gluten free soy sauce.

I was hesitant to go because it was kind of pricy and, obviously not Bulgarian in the slightest.

But now with Nathan, who doesn’t really like sushi, off doing his own thing, I thought “what the hell” and hopped on a metro into town.

I had 4 different dishes and a total of 30 pieces.   Yeah, I pigged out.

I’m not even sorry about it.

I was pretty much done after my third sushi order but then I looked over at another table.

They had a plate in the center of the table with something wrapped in aluminum foil on it.   Oh, and it was on fire.

Obviously, this piqued my interest.   I mean, there was literally something burning at the table next to me.

I had to know what the hell it was.

Turns out it was listed on the first page of the menu and you’ll never guess what it was called…

Sushi on fire.

It was a sushi roll of prawns and asparagus coated in sea bass.

Sounds good to me!

I ordered it and a few minutes later our waitress placed the tin foil covered roll at the table and lit it on fire.

Eventually the flame went out and, tada, I had a cooked sushi roll.

Like nothing I’ve ever seen or experienced before.

So, yeah, it was a pretty cool lunch.

In all, my bill was a whopping 57lev ($42) which, for lunch in Bulgaria, is pretty pricey.

But, hey, sometimes ya just gotta treat yourself, ya know?

Lazy afternoon

Nathan had joined me halfway through lunch and we headed out around 1pm.

It was now pouring rain.   Time to get that handy umbrella out that I’ve been lugging around for 3 weeks.

We had planned on going on a different walking tour this afternoon but, to be perfectly frank, we were both kinda okay just hanging at the apartment playing cards.

We went from trying to fit too many things into a day in Istanbul three weeks ago to just having days where we have nothing planned.

We may have slightly overcorrected…

Spaghetti

At 8pm we headed back out again.   The rain was gone but it was still a cool 14C out.

This being Nathan’s last night of the trip, I let him decide what we’d be doing for dinner tonight.

Since we had already opened up the non-Bulgarian food floodgates with sushi for lunch, he figured why not just go all out and go to The Spaghetti Kitchen for dinner.

I had this restaurant marked on the map because they had a gluten free pasta option.

For dinner we split a spinach salad and I had a carbonara pasta.

The funny thing is, even though it says that you can replace the pasta on any meal for gluten free pasta, our server actually cautioned me to not order it if I was celiac because it’s cooked in the same water as the regular pasta.

Um, what’s the sense of having a gluten-free option then?

Anyway, I figured I’d be okay so I told her to go ahead with the order.

And, yeah, that was the day.   Just alot of eating.

I know, it’s a shocker!   Todd eating all day!

Tomorrow marks the halfway point of my trip and it’s also the day Nathan flies back home and leaves me to finish out my trip solo.

It’s been great having him as a travel buddy but it’ll also be nice to get back to my solo backpacking grind which I’ve become quite adept at.

Let’s see what adventures I can find…