What to do in Sophia?

What to do is right!  Nobody seemed to have a real good suggestion and we had a few misses before we found one which suited us and was available.
We met our van this morning at Alexander Nevski Cathedral.  What a beautiful church.

It is situated on this square in the center of Sophia.

A glance inside the church.  The surprising thing is that there are no upper floors.  The shape you see from the outside is completely open on the inside.

We drove south from Sophia toward the mountains for an hour and a half.  We were headed to the Rila Monastery.  Along the way we saw lots of villages and wide plains dotted with brush.  There were fields of corn, grain and hay along the way and soon we were winding up a narrow mountain road.

Here is the gate, our first glimpse.

We stepped inside into another world.
You can see the mountains in the background.
Rila was the main monastery in Bulgaria and one of the few using the Bulgarian language.
Today the number of monks has dwindled down to 10.

It was in the process of being restored so the paint was fresh and bright.  The brick tower on the left was where the monks went to protect themselves from invasions.

It really looked more like the set of a sound stage than any monastery I have ever seen.

I love the stripes.

This is a typical monks room, preserved as part of the museum.

There was a second small room for cooking .

Eating was done on this mat on the floor.

A very old door.

Betty standing with some others in the center.  You can see it is quite a large area in the inner yard.

The back door leading to one small street.

After lunch we headed back to Sophia stopping at a town where pelicans have taken up residence.  You can see this huge nest and one of its residents firmly planted atop the chimney.  It was considered good luck to have one build on your house and the people didn't remove them.

This house is extremely fortunate.

Back in town we saw many of these little cubicles on posts at street corners.  We were told that they were the old police stations left from the days of the communists.

Back at the hotel we are waiting for the buffet to open and getting organized for an early morning start tomorrow as we head out to the airport at 3:30 on our way to Athens.  By  tomorrow afternoon we should be happily aboard our ship for the Greek Island cruise.
I don't know if Internet is possible from that ship so will just do what I can.