Travel & trips
Sightseeing (somewhere other than Sofia)
We love it when people come to stay because it forces us to behave like tourists and venture out on day trips. Seems like whenever we have the time, energy and money for a fun day out, we default to a day in Sofia. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Sofia. We live in the...
Sinemorets (yes, again)
Happy to see I’ve nudged a few people to head to the wonderful Greek island of Samothraki this year. We’ll be going back ourselves at some point. But this year? This year I wanted to hunker down and go back to our old favourite, Sinemorets, on Bulgaria's Black Sea...
Hello, England
Here I am, in the UK for the first time since *peers at watch*, oh yes, November 2019. That can’t be right, can it? Has the pandemic really wiped out that much time? Weirdly, though, it only feels like five minutes since I was last here. Perhaps that’s a sign I’ve...
Hell is other holidaymakers
We had the loveliest time in Parga. We really did. We went to the beach almost every day. We swam in the most beautifully clear, calm water. (In the bay off Parga’s main beach there’s an island that you can swim out to with a dinky little church and pathways to...
Sofia vs Plovdiv: Which is better for a city break?
I’m back! If you follow my adventures on Instagram, you’ll know that we’ve been away in Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second city, and Sofia, the capital. After 15 months of pandemic life, I was in desperate need of some city action – and with both of us being fully...
A trip to Troyan Monastery (but mainly, Bulgarian pottery)
I have never seen Troyan Monastery as quiet as it was last Friday. True, the main chapel is currently undergoing restoration, but I was still surprised to see the rest of the complex so empty and, well, monastic. There were more people browsing the wooden bowls and...
A change of scenery (and some news)
Back in bleak old January, we booked a little something to look forward to for August – a week in a small guesthouse in Sinemorets. By March, when we went into lockdown, we were already resigning ourselves to the fact that we probably wouldn’t go. By June,...
A trip up Vitosha
One of the many things I love about Sofia is how Vitosha mountain hulks beside it. We’ll often stroll down the streets and comment how unusual it is, in a capital city, to see a ruddy great mountain squatting at the end of the road. But we’ve never really...
Samothraki (smug holiday slideshow alert)
Ever wondered where all the beautiful young (and young-at-heart) Greek hippies go on holiday? Ever fancied holidaying in Man Bun Central? Ever longed to wear your bum bag, bucket hat and ugly sandals with pride, in a totally non-ironic way? The answer is...
172. Sozopol and Sinemorets
Yes, we went to Sozopol and Sinemorets on holiday. Again. I know, I know. We’re getting a bit stuck in our holiday ways as we get older. Every year we say, ‘Let’s go somewhere we’ve never been before. Albania! Macedonia! Georgia!’ Yet we nearly always...
163. June!
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but it’s June. Already. June of 2018. Yesterday it was 1998 and I was sitting my a-levels, driving a knackered orange Fiesta with a broken speedometer, and planning an award-winning career as a foreign correspondent (or stage...