Bulgaria, baby!

We made it through an insane 22 hour overnight train journey from Budapest, and are now in Sofia, Bulgaria - woo hoo!!

The overnighter
Despite some slight misgivings about such a long trip (did I mention 22 hours with no breaks??), it was actually really fun!!

We left at 7.30pm on Wednesday night, with an arrival time of 5pm on Thursday. I had a surprisingly peaceful night's sleep, despite three(!!) sets of border guards visits at 12.30am.

They were all really friendly people, but what a job - getting on trains at midnight to look at passports and sleepy people who can barely open their eyes to compare passport pics.

The cabin
We had our own awesome little sleeper cabin which was seriously deluxe with full sized bunk beds and a little sink and mirror, including air con (okay, we had an open window...)

We did have our own "concierge", Tomas who we only shared with one other sleeper cabin (it was not a very busy train!!) Tomas looked after us on the journey - presumably to make sure no one stole our stuff, or killed us in our sleep... just kidding - we had a triple lock on the door and I felt very safe.

He even delivered breakfast of a cappuccino and "7 day croissant" (the UHT milk version of a chocolate filled croissant - ie long life) which was perhaps not the best croissant ever... but hey, who am I to complain about a free breakfast??






Nice, right? Definitely waaay more space than a plane!

The trip itself was really relaxing. We spent the whole of Thursday on the train reading and peering out the windows - such a restful interlude after a week of pavement pounding in Budapest...

It is a large distance from Budapest to Sofia (in kms) but it turns out the main reason the trip takes so long is the sleeper carriage is the only part of the train that goes the whole way... It gets unhooked and hooked onto half a dozen different regional trains and taken through a host of very small towns and through some beautiful scenery.

Here are a couple of pics of the journey:


Beautiful views from the train



Leaping spring foal in Bulgarian countryside

At more than one of the Bulgarian stations, there were horses and carts parked at the station!

If you had the time, I would definitely recommend this as a great overnight train experience. We used the Eurail pass and paid a supplement of AUD$40 each for the sleeper cabin.

Zoo cafe, Budapest

Finally, I just had to post a couple of pics of our visit to the zoo cafe in Budapest. We went on our last morning, having spotted it the day before and it didn't disappoint. We ordered iced teas and in exchange, got to hold lizards!! They also had half a dozen cats wandering around, a cockatoo, a macaw, chinchillas, rabbits and guinea pigs - so cute!




Phil holding bearded dragon


Macaw!


Moustachioed kitty


This one looks like it's singing an aria

Sofia
I always make these blog posts too long, so updates on our time in Sofia in the next post...