This morning was a replay of yesterday. We headed off for a walking tour of the old town of Sofia, going back over much of what Todor and I covered yesterday.

The good thing was that we had 3 hours afterwards to see whatever we wanted, before we had to get on the bus and leave Bulgaria forever.

Before we separated, the group went through the Alexander Nevsky church (again.) It turned into being one of the funniest churches I’ve been in.

Look at the face of this guy.

Now look at Jake, our guide. He comes from Croatia, but he must have a great-grandfather who had a secret second family in Bulgaria.

He laughed when I said this. “ Who knows? It’s very possible,” he said.

A painting of a Tasmanian.
That’s an Australian joke.

Look at the strained expression on this poor little lion.

He’s holding up a lot of marble.

“Who farted??”

See? This church was hilarious.

As we wandered through the parks, there were lots of interesting sculptures.

As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, I’m partial to a sculpture or two.

As we were walking back towards where our meeting point would be, we saw the church of St George. It’s is a late antiquered brick rotunda in Sofia, Bulgaria. Built in the early 4th century CEas Roman baths, it became a church inside the walls of Serdica, capital of ancient Dacia Mediterranea during the Roman and Byzantine eras.[1]The early Christianchurch is considered the oldest building in modern Sofia and belongs to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

Here is a better view of St Sofia than the one I took yesterday. She is the patron saint of wisdom, which is why she has the owl perched on her arm.

Blogless Sandy wanted to go back through the Roman ruins, while I wanted to go back to St Sofia church and have a good look at the interior, without a funeral getting in the way. I also wanted a photo of the decapitated president.

Look at what I saw! What a great name for socks. 🙂

Seeing as the church was the furthest away, we walked there first.  As you can see, it doesn’t look terribly impressive from the outside.
the wreaths are from the equivalent of our Anzac Day from a couple of days ago.

Blogless Sandy visited it yesterday, but didn’t realise there was the crypt beneath it. So she prowled through the ancient graves, while I wandered around and drank in the beauty.

“ You went all the way to Sofia, and all you brought me was this lousy cross?”

Todor pointed this sculpture out yesterday.

The “decapitated” Bulgarian leader sculpture is a bronze monument in Sofia’s Kristal Park dedicated to Stefan Stambolov, a 19th-century Prime Minister known as the “Bulgarian Bismarck”. Unveiled in 1995, the sculpture features a severed head with a split, commemorating his 1895 assassination where he received 24 fatal knife wounds. 

I liked this view of the Russian church.

We wandered through the Roman ruins, both underground and outside. 

Blogless Sandy contemplating her own mortality.

Putting my foot over an ancient Roman mosaic floor was a bit of a thrill. 

Ancient water pipes for indoor plumbing in the 3D century. Amazing.

Remember the tiny church built on a hill with a dug out floor? This is the back of it. 

I liked this view of the mountains. Both modern and ancient people had the same view.

On the road again! Snow-capped mountains on one side …

… and a Smokey power plant on the other.

After a one and a half hour border crossing … no, I’m not joking … we were in Macedonia.

A charming thing we soon noticed was that there were poppies along the sides of the roads.

“When my mother was young and kids were sick, the adults used to grind up a few poppy seeds to get them to sleep,” said Jake. He also mentioned that Albanian has poppy fields for the heroin trade.

After we checked into our hotel in Skopje, we gathered in the foyer and walked 5 minutes to the old town, where we found dinner. Macedonia has its own currency and we were warned that it might be difficult to find a place that would take euros.
But we’re only in the country for a couple of days. I didn’t want to risk being left with money I couldn’t use. So we decided to risk it. After all, if all else failed, I had protein bars that taste of chocolate flavoured plaster board to fall back on.

The first place we asked, they were happy to take euros as payment. I mean, they’d be stupid if they didn’t. They’d be actively turning away business.

Again, dinner was lovely and pretty cheap. Nothing like the shock of Icelandic prices, thank god!

We walked back to the hotel with the wailing call to prayer from the local mosque ringing in our ears.

We went to bed and we’re just drifting off to sleep when this hit.

Honestly, all you can do is laugh.

Dad joke of the day: