Day Three: Boyana Church & Stuck in Vitosha, Bulgaria

I didn't even noticed and realised that I absolutely forget to write my day three in Bulgaria. So now I decide to write it here before I skip it again! On last day in Bulgaria, me and Catherine plan to visit Boyana Church and Vitosha before we flying back to Dubai during evening. So we woke up very early in the morning, had our breakfast in the hostel and our driver come and pick us up around 8.30am. But after I done with my breakfasts, I told Catherine I need to go to post office to send my postcards, so I need her to tell the driver come and pick me up in the post office after that.

After done posting and sending out my postcards, the driver already waiting for me in front of the post office with my luggage in the boots. So we continue to our first stop Boyana Church. After we reached there, we couldn't buy the ticket on the spot because it was sold out so we need to wait for another 30 minutes for another batch of tickets. But it was alright, at least at the end, we still manage to get the tickets and visit inside the church.

The entrances to the Boyana Church. Only certain numbers of people allow to go inside following the time given and we only allow to visit for 10 minutes inside the church. This church located on the outskirts of Sofia, Boyana Church consists of three buildings. The eastern church was built in the 10th century, then enlarged at the beginning of the 13th century by Sebastocrator Kaloyan, who ordered a second two storey building to be erected next to it. The frescoes in this second church, painted in 1259, make it one of the most important collections of medieval paintings. The ensemble is completed by a third church, built at the beginning of the 19th century. This site is one of the most complete and perfectly preserved monuments of east European medieval art.

The mural painting inside the church that still well preserved until today . This church also listed as UNESCO World Heritage in 1979.

After this church, we went to Vitosha Mountain to get the whole view of the city from the top. Vitosha is the oldest protected nature park in the Balkans. It was created in 1934 and now encompasses over 100 square miles. It has rivers, caves, waterfalls, monasteries, hot springs, lodges, ski lifts, hiking trails, and so much more to discover.

Very breathtaking view from the mountain. “If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.”

The picture of me and sweet Catherine in the top of Vitosha Mountain.

Impressive, splendid, and superb view of the nature.

Then we continue the walk inside the forest and walk about 2 hours until we reached the peak or a place where people having picnic, rest. and suntanning. I still remembered that we need to use the toilet in the middle of the walk, but since there are no toilet around us, so we decide to settle our business next to the bushes. Thank God that time was no people around us. That was so embarrassing moment!

We have no idea how we reached this place at the end, but we know at this point we need to contact our driver because he had no idea where we are right now. I did tried to contact him but this places have no signal! So we continue to walk further to check for the signal.

The more we walk further, we stop at this place. We found out the name of this place, Zlatnite Mostove. Zlatnite Mostove is the largest stone river on Vitosha Mountain. The feature is situated in the valley of Vladayska River, extending 2.2 km, and up to 150 m wide, with several ‘tributary’ stone rivers. We totally forget that we still need to call our driver. We really get amazed by this stunning rock view river.

At the end, we decide to ask help from local people, so we somehow find one lady who speak english, so we tell her our current situation and she straight help us to call the tour agency. So she even drive us to the meeting point to meet back our driver but when we reached the meeting point, our driver was not there so this lady call back to the tour agency and only know that the driver was at somewhere else. I guess they have miscommunication over the phone but we didn't ask much instead we just follow them. As our flight time getting shorter and shorter, we are afraid that we might miss our flight back to Dubai.

Thank God, finally we saw our driver and we quickly give the lady a hug and thank her for helping us so much. I couldn't really imagine without that lady help, probably we still stuck in that forest. Somehow we learnt something new and valuable from this experiences. From there, the driver straight fetch us to the airport and we fly back to Dubai.

Love,

Elene