We woke to the news that England had played a European Cup qualifier in Sofia last night and there had been huge problems with racist monkey chants and Nazi salutes. I immediately presumed it was the dreaded English football "fans" causing trouble once again, but in fact it was the Bulgarians. Whoops - hope they're a bit friendlier towards us.
The flight was nothing special and I’m quite glad we won’t be entitled to a meal on the next two trips as I’m rather fed up with BA’s breakfasts.
The flight was nothing special and I’m quite glad we won’t be entitled to a meal on the next two trips as I’m rather fed up with BA’s breakfasts.
One thing does seem to have changed on all flights though, is that the pilot doesn’t tell you the route which is a pity as it’s nice to have a vague idea of what/where you flying over when you look out of the window.
As we were hand luggage only we got to Avis/Budget desk and didn’t have too long to wait (there were 10/12 people waiting by the time we’d done). It was the usual dual role; one nice, sweet lady doing the admin and then a bloke handing over the keys and warning us of the dire consequences if we didn’t buy their very expensive top up insurance - no thank you.
We’d read beforehand that under Bulgarian law you must carry a warning triangle, hi-vis vest and various other things and had debated whether we should take the necessary with us, but we checked and everything was supplied.
Rather surprisingly the car hire company didn’t provide maps so we went to Tourist Information to be greeted with a very surly “no, try the newsagents”. We didn’t bother as we had already printed off quite detailed directions to the hotel which, fingers crossed, would suffice.
To find the car involved accessing level -4 and then walking around an underground car park until we eventually found our car - a Fiat 500 as ordered, Mint Green, hence "Minty". We'd been told that the car had been checked and there were numerous small dents and scratches noted on the paperwork - this is not a good sign as it means they are really picky when you return the car, so we spent a little time carefully going around the car and photographing all minor marks just in case.
The airport is only about 10kms from the city and being a Friday afternoon the traffic was hideous (actually it could always be like that for all we know). There are often 3/4 lanes and cars weave in and out without any kind of indication. We missed a vital turning and before we knew it we were quite lost - we knew the direction we wanted to go but because of one way streets, we couldn’t do it. So we stopped and turned on Google navigation on my phone and it was absolutely BRILLIANT and got us to the hotel without further problems.
One good tip I've learned, especially when the alphabet is unfamiliar and therefore street names are a challenge, is to have a look at the hotel using Google Street View so that at least you have an idea what the street/area looks like.