Sofia, Bulgaria - Free Walking Tour

Sofia, Bulgaria was AWESOME! For a capital city it's pretty small and so quaint and cute! There are quite a few walking tours (free and paid) that happen daily at different times, which we took advantage of. The day we arrived (after sleeping overnight in the Sofia airport because we landed at like 1am) we went to our hostel (Hostel Mostel, which was really great also!) and immediately went on a walking tour. Below is one of many beautiful churches in Sofia.

This church was part of the "old town". They've built modern Sofia all around it, so it's an interesting time capsule.

When they were recently excavating to build a new road, they unearthed what you see below...a whole city! Rather than tear it down and continue with their plans of road building, they are preserving it and redesigned the road plans to go around it. 

This beautiful building used to be a bath house. There are natural mineral springs underneath that used to be used for the baths. Currently it is a museum about the history of Sofia, but according to our tour guide, there are talks of making it into a bath house again.

Here's me drinking the mineral water that constantly flows out of a fountain in front of the building. There are these natural springs all over the city that people bring bottles to fill up. This particular spring was warm.

Here's another spring fountain...it was cold and refreshing.

Sofia has so many wonderful parks! This one was very popular with people playing live music (jazz...reminded me of New Orleans), sitting out of cafes, lying on the grass, strolling the grounds...it was very nice.

This used to be a palace, but now it's an art school.

Soviet art in a park.

This is Sofia Church...what the city of Sofia is named after.

If you look closely in the tree, you can see a bell. That's the church's bell...in a tree!

Another beautiful church.

Athens - 3 Islands Tour

Another tour we took was a 3 islands tour in a day. This is more of what i was expecting when going to Greece. 

First stop: Hydra.

Donkey! 

At sea again...

2nd stop: Poros.

3rd stop: Aegina.

The monastery of Agios Nektarios

S. Nektarios' coffin of relics that people place their hands and faces on and kiss.

Candle storage

On the boat again...i took a picture of our reflections in the ceiling as we were lying in a booth.

We were pretty exhausted from a long day on the water, touring 3 islands, and a lot of sun.

Athens - Random Stuff

Random stuff around Athens:

Super disproportionate mannequin.

Beautiful black & white spotted pigeon.

Goat(?) rotisserie on the sidewalk.

I wonder what's behind the fence where you can scuba dive and wear glasses, headphones, Charlie Chaplin hat, jumpsuit, boots, & gloves...but no smoking and definitely no hi-fiving. Things that make you go hm.

Athens - Little Church, Changing of the Guards

As we walked around Athens, we found quite a few of these tiny churches dispersed around the city. 

Changing of the guards

One of our best selfies. ;op

Delphi - More Ruins

One of the tours we took in Athens was a day trip to Delphi, which is located on Mount Parnassus, about a 2-hr drive from Athens. It is where the ruins of the Temples of Apollo and Athena are located. 

This stone was considered to be the center of the world.

Ampitheater

Yet another not-so-great selfie. :op Our selfies tended to only get worse over time. Sad.

There's a museum on site that holds the artifacts found among the ruins.

heehee...

Athens - Street Art

We happened to come across some ok-ish street art in Athens, despite the overwhelming amount of tagging graffiti.

COS trippn' 5th stop: Athens - Ruins

Our 1st stop in the Northern Hemisphere was Athens, Greece...not my fave place. Athens is a modern city mixed with ancient ruins, which could be nice if not for the ubiquitous graffiti (tagging, not cool street art) and just overall dirtiness and griminess of the city. We even witnessed 2 dudes shooting up on the sidewalk in the middle of the day. We walked by so many people slumped over passed out from drugs on door stoops. It was sad. The cute section of the city was tucked away in little side streets near Acropolis. 

We went to Acropolis, but the line was never-ending and it was under construction, so we decided to just look at it from a distance. There's a marble hill with a great view of it and the city where we and many others went to take photos.

View of the city from the marble hill.

A view of the never-ending line to get into Acropolis. This photo really doesn't do it justice though.

The Arch of Hadrian across from Acropolis. You can see Acropolis through the arch.

The Temple of Zeus. You had to pay to go in, so we just took photos from the fence.

Our view from Athen's Choice hostel/hotel. Even though i wasn't impressed with Athens, in general, Athen's Choice was a great place to stay. The staff was great and very accommodating, and they served a delicious complimentary breakfast every morning! One morning we had to leave early for a tour and they packed us a complimentary lunch to go! They were awesome!! :oD