Start the day with Mekitza!

Exactly as the title says!

We started the day by walking to Mekitza & Coffee, and instead of a normal coffee, we thought we would try a coloured latte along with Mekitza. There was a square just across the road, so we sat on a bench overlooking the Seven Saints Church, or Church of Sveti Sedmochislenitsi. The latte was interesting, although I'm not sure its ever going to take off; the Mekitza on the other hand was amazing! 

Breakfast was about 2000 calories, so now it was time to walk it off. First stop was St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral which serves as the church of the Patriarch of Bulgaria and it is one of the 50 largest Christian church buildings by volume in the world. It was absolutely stunning, and well worth a visit. We couldn't take any photos inside, but did take one outside before deciding that it was coffee time again. This is where our little booklet came in handy; the recommendation was Coffee Syndicate where we could apparently have the best coffee in town. 


The coffee shop was busy, and I can testify that the coffee was decent, but I'm not sure it was the best. After a fleeting visit, we decided to visit another place in the booklet. It was a shop called ART.E and was a gift shop for handmade ceramics and porcelain. Iain bought an espresso cup as he is slightly obsessed with coffee, and I bought a cup to remind me of Sofia. 

The booklet was proving handy, so we decided to wander back towards our hotel and visit Chilli Hills Farm Shop, a chilli boutique where you could buy Bulgarian craft sauces. Again, Iain has a slight obsession with hot sauce so he bought a couple to take home and try. Not sure what that says about my cooking!

It was now early afternoon, and about 25 degrees, what better than a cold beer or two, or in my case, an Aperol Spritz or two. We sat outside Green Bar on Vitosha Boulevard for the next few hours, it was a great spot for people watching and sunbathing. 


After a couple of hours, we thought we better make a move. We decided to stop by the wine shop where we had the wine tasting, hoping to pick up a bottle of "Mini-mum" to take home with us. Thankfully, the shop had been restocked and we wandered back to the hotel to drop off our purchases and get ready for dinner. 

The restaurant was a 15 minute walk away, but we were slightly early, so dropped into a little craft beer shop called Vault City to have another swift drink, and in my case a strawberry sundae sour beer.


I had booked a Bulgarian restaurant called MOMA, it was apparently the new modern face of Bulgarian restaurants. We decided to try as many traditional dishes as possible, as well as another bottle of red wine. Our dinner started with Shopska Salad which is Bulgaria's most famous salad and national dish; the colours of the salad are even the same as the Bulgarian flag. We also shared, what was called, "6 Traditional Bulgarian Appetisers." These were relishes which we were to spread on bread; I've added a screenshot of the menu as they are too difficult to explain! My main course was Chicken and pork served in a bread bowl, while Iain had Chicken "Lyutica", an authentic disk from north-western Bulgaria made with tomato sauce, garden vegetables, garlic and egg. I was determined to have dessert this time, so we shared baklava, which was delicious. The food was excellent, but we were stuffed by the end of it. We had only managed a couple of glasses of wine, but they were happy to give us a brown bag to take the remaining wine away, very classy!








We waddled back to the hotel, ready for bed but determined to finish the bottle of wine; unfortunately, we couldn't pack that in the suitcase.

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