We got up pretty early, shivering from the cold air put out by the air conditioner. We couldn’t figure out how to adjust the temperature, or even turn it off. But we jumped into the hot shower to warm up a bit. When Kuniko stepped out of the shower, there was a pretty good river of water traveling across the wood floors to the other side of the room – uh oh. We sacrificed some towels to solve the problem, but the design of the shower wasn’t well thought out.
So, out the door early for sightseeing, and we headed straight to St. Alexander Nevsky cathedral to take a closer look. On the way there were plenty of beautiful buildings to see, and despite being a relatively small city the boulevards were sometimes quite wide.
The cathedral itself was quite impressive, similar in style to the more modern St. Sava that we had visited in Belgrade. Inside no photos were allowed, but the interior was styled in a dark and traditional way, in contrast to the bright modern gold interior of St. Sava. We spent some time walking around and then started to backtrack towards the center of the city to get some breakfast. We had decided to forgo the hotel breakfast and see what kinds of local delicacies we could scare up.
We enjoyed a nice meal at Rainbow Factory, a little stylish cafe in a busy neighborhood near downtown. I had a beef sandwich with melted cheese and pickled onions, and Kuniko had an omelette. Everything was good – and we liked the vibe of the place. Around the corner we checked out a Billa supermarket and got some rose candies to try out, more yogurt, and everything was really cheap.
We went back to the hotel to do some laundry in our room – we were kicking ourselves for not doing it the night before and having our air conditioner dry everything out. After laundry we were ready to do some wine tasting, so we went back out on the town. I had a pretty good list of places that offered tastings, so we went to the closest one, Tempus Vini, but got bad news.
Apparently they do tastings only through “guided experiences”, like Viator and Trip.com. I’m sure this is more profitable for them, but for us it meant that we’d have to wait until 2 pm for their next reservation. No thanks, plenty of other wine places to check out. The guy didn’t seem that friendly or interested in more business, so I’m glad we skipped tasting here. The second place said they were open for sales at the moment but tasting wouldn’t be until 2 or 3 pm, so we decided to go get a couple of glasses of wine at a nearby square. After a little searching we found the Imperial Gastropub, with an owner who was happy to open a few bottles and let us taste.
We tried a Bulgarian white wine, that in all honesty was a little simple for my taste, but we could sit and sip and plan the rest of our day. The atmosphere of the place was pretty stylish, with seats out front overlooking the streetcar rails and square.
After a bit we headed out to have lunch at Izbata Tavern, the first actually traditional restaurant since our aborted attempt on the touristy thoroughfare last evening. As we entered we were apparently a little early, but they seated us in a corner and gave us drinks while we waited 15 minutes or so for the kitchen to open. I enjoyed a cold local beer – it hit the spot.
For lunch we were served some grilled bread with garlic and cheese, and I had sausage and porcini mushrooms served in a hard bread bowl. The mushrooms were a little mushy, but the sausage was nicely flavored. Kuniko had pork in wine sauce with rice, and that was excellent. It tasted like comfort food, and both enjoyed finishing that off.
As we finished our lunch people started drifting in to eat, and a group of local workers were sitting near us. I tried to see what they ordered to see what dishes were popular with the locals, but I couldn’t see clearly without looking like a stalker. It was good to see that the restaurant was doing well, though.
Walking back through the neighborhood around the restaurant I was struck by how comfortable it was. The streets were lined with trees, there were many small shops and interesting looking restaurants, and it was quiet with a comfortable breeze flowing through even in the heart of summer. I wished I could stay longer and explore more.
We took a break back in our hotel room to cool down. We hadn’t forgotten our original plan to do some wine tasting – so we next headed off to try wines at Wine Generator. This time, they let us inside and we walked down some steps. The lady who helped us (and who seemed to be the owner) seated us and asked us what we were looking to do. She had a tasting with some cheese for a very reasonable price, so we promptly agreed. After some trouble with some wine glasses we got sorted out and were able to choose from six different wines. We each chose three to taste (making sure that Kuniko and I had different wines) and that helped us taste the lot.
Kuniko’s three were: Sandanski misket, Vrachanski misket, and Gamza. I had Nikolaevo Chardonnay, Mavrud, and Syrah. All the wines were tasty, I especially liked the reds as they tended to be hearty and flavorful without hitting you over the head like some big reds do.
As we sipped the wines another group nearby were talking and tasting, switching between English and another language we didn’t recognize. It was strange how they switched languages for no apparent reason.
The owner came by now and then to get our opinions and see what she could do to help us. As we left she brought out some cherry liquor as an apology for the glasses mixup, and it turned out that she had been to Napa recently for a wine industry event. She was super nice – Kuniko said she reminded her of Lady Gaga – and I was so glad we chose this place to taste wine rather than the first one with the tour requirement.
As we walked around we stopped in Lidl, a market that we had often visited on our last trip to Europe. It was a little junkier than I remembered, with lots of boxes unpacked on the shelves. Different countries, different vibes, I guess.
Later we were able to develop our appetite and decided to try another traditional restaurant for dinner. This time we went to the very touristy Hadjidragonov’s Houses Restaurant. It was a pleasant walk in a different direction for us, in pretty hot weather. Even though it was cooler than Japan, it still was tough going when walking in the sun.
Since we were eating earlier we didn’t need a reservation, and we were seated upstairs in a big room all by ourselves. I’m not sure if it was meant as a snub, but we were happy to have the quiet place, and avoid any traditional live music or dancing that might break out. We didn’t have the friendliest server, but she was speaking English for us so I can understand. For dinner Kuniko had kavarma po radomirski – baked pork in a tomato sauce, with a chili pepper on top for fire. I had a similar dish but cheese rather than pork. Both dishes nicely fit into the comfort food category, and we enjoyed them with glasses of local red wine.
After we ate I think the server kind of forgot about us – we waited for quite a while but nobody came up the stairs. So in the end we had to leave on our own, and when paying the bill our server looked visibly unhappy. Often on this trip servers would say something like, “this price does not include service” or something to that effect. They are hoping that you’ll add a tip or leave some cash. This tipping in Europe feels weird to me – I hope they are not trending towards the American style of tipping. But we certainly weren’t planning on tipping after being sort of forgotten upstairs, and so I think our server was caught in a cycle of bad attitude -> no tip -> bad attitude -> endless loop.
On our way home we stopped once more at Billa to stock up on the rose candy (that was quite good – jelly candies dusted in white powdered sugar – and came across a little drama. As our cashier was ringing up our items some big voices erupted (in Bulgarian I guess) behind us, and we turned to find a huge (and I mean huge) supermarket worker in the process of apprehending a shoplifter who was trying (I guess) to steal a can of beer. Shouts were exchanged between the two of them, and then the staff physically pushed the guy towards the exit door. Unfortunately between the shoplifter and the exit door was a line of customers checking out. The two of us, for example. So as this shoplifter is bouncing against walls on his way out the door we had to do some quick side stepping to avoid being hit.
The big staff guy followed the shoplifter out the door to get in a few licks, and even our cashier stepped away from the register (leaving our items still on the counter being scanned) and went outside to get in on the event. She wasn’t a big cashier but I guess she had confidence with her big coworker by her side. Once they left the door automatically closed on them, and suddenly all the customers were left standing there going, WTF?
Our cashier wanted to come back in and was locked out by the automatic door, so I went over to activate the motion sensor, and she came in to finish our transaction, practically throwing our items against the wall after scanning them. Whoah lady – we are the good guys here!
After that excitement we walked down the long touristy street to check out the National Palace of Culture. The palace is located in the center of a huge park area, designed as a place for the people of the city to gather and relax. There were a lot of people out that night, amateur singers and dancers, magicians, and just families enjoying the outdoors.
I liked the vibe out here – with the sun down it was cooler, and it felt like the city was sort of coming together to celebrate. The palace itself was dramatically placed at the center of some fountains (although nowhere near the scale of Bucharest) with trees and flags lining the square.
Eventually we wandered back down the touristy street, checking shops and buying water and drinkable yogurt on our way. There were two types of water bottles from the same maker, one pink and one blue. I asked the staff what the difference was, and she looked at me like I might have asked the stupidest question in the world. She just shook her head, and said that it was water. And she was right – I picked one at random and that was exactly what it was.
We retired for the day, hopefully the air conditioner would treat us more nicely this evening.
