Weekend in Sofia

On Friday afternoon, we left Stephen's city for the capital.  We were able to meet our friends from the airport for dinner.  They were on their pick up trip, so we were also able to meet their new daughter.  It was great to hear about their experiences through the week and how life with their first child had been so far.   After dinner, we headed to the hotel and tried to download a movie from iTunes....we were not even close to being able to watch it that night...it took about 12 hours to complete.   I need to remember to download several kids show before the pick up trip!
Saturday,  Troy and I spent the day exploring Sofia. 


It is a beautiful city.  Very interesting mix of old architecture mixed with socialist panel type buildings.  The country is very poor, so nothing appears to be well maintained, but it is all very clean.  We spent the day walking around, touring beautiful cathedrals and parks. 


We shopped for souvenirs for our kids and walked more at an outdoor market.  We tasted several different Bulgarian pastries in the morning.  We had a wonderful early dinner at a Greek restaurant.  It was an excellent treat! 


That evening, we headed back to our hotel and watched to movie that had finally downloaded.
Sunday morning, we woke up and tried to attend church.  We had found a church listed on EEM's website and decided to go.  We took a taxi to the hotel that was listed.  When we got there, we were told the church had not met there in about 6 months.  They gave us a name and address, but we were not sure if it was the address of where the church met, or just the residential address of their contact.  We started walking, but the area got worse and worse.  We spent about 30 minutes, but could never find the correct place and we were not feeling very safe.   I really enjoyed our adventure.  It let us see part of the city that was not the tourist area.


Sunday evening, we went with Melissa Schmitt out to dinner.  We set out for a pizza place that Melissa had found earlier in the week.  It was closed and it had started raining, so we ate at the next place we found.  It was a restaurant that had meat hanging in the windows.  They served some type of sandwiches with this meat that had French fries on them and a sauce that looked like sour cream.  The men working there enjoyed laughing at us because we could speak only English and were clearly tourist.  After dinner, we went and packed up to go meet Brayden on Monday.

We also got to meet Stephanie Roodhuyzen and Abbie Caple over the weekend. They were also there on a trip one visit to meet Stephanie's girls! Abbie is a sweet young woman who has advocated for orphans and has supported Stephanie during the adoption process

I know I am very late in adding the events of the second week of our trip.  I think I was overwhelmed during the second half of my trip and was not ready to share it yet....Then I got really busy when I got home.  I am going to try to get up to date in the next few days.