One of my favourite countries in eastern Europe, Bulgaria was an utter surprise for me.

I remembering arriving on the bus into the capital Sofia, instantly realising Bulgarian’s used the Cyrillic alphabet and being totally blown away thinking “eek how am I going to understand anything now?!”

This really does show how wildly unprepared I was for Bulgaria – both linguistically and in terms of how great to travel this country is!

Coming from a neighbouring country in Easter Europe, I actually expected Bulgaria to be similar, but it’s completely different.

Much more like Turkey than its neighbouring Slavic nations, Bulgaria’s capital Sofia was the last major stop on the route to Constantinople back in the day and bears many of the historic hallmarks of being a key spot on a major, ancient trade route.

My guide told me that every time they go to build something in this city it takes them forever, because developers are constantly finding Roman and Byzantine ruins where they plan to put the foundations!

But what about beyond the capital?

Well, there’s some pretty amazing mountains to discover in Bulgaria, many filled with ski resorts in the winter or beautiful historic towns and monasteries perfect for hiking in the summer – Plovdiv and Veliko Tarnovo are 2 eternal favs.

And then of course, there’s the coast.

Black Sea it might be, but stretches of this shoreline offer lovely sand and perfect swimming conditions – just make sure to avoid Sunny Beach and Varna if you’re not keen on the Brits abroad  crowd!

Discover more about travelling Bulgaria in these posts…

Discover all the info you need to know in these articles I wrote about my travels there….