Month: June 2026

And so we’d reached the final day of the trip. Just a few hours to kill before the flight home. We went for a wander and considered buying some presents to take home, but we decided to wait until we got to the airport and get some things there. Instead we found an Irish bar, Slàinte Irish Pub, opposite the hotel that was cool, comfortable […]

On all of our trips it is Mrs MA who is in charge of cultural excursions. She does the checking and lets me know the places that she really wants to see. On the whole I go along with her suggestions as they are very rarely wrong, although I tend to draw the line at Art Galleries as they invariably do nothing for me, and […]

The first target for today was what would be my first ever visit to a mosque, Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Şerifi, better known as Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque. The area outside when we arrived was predictably chaotic with guides offering their services to anybody that looked like a tourist. We were just going to buy a ticket and queue, but were warned that it may take […]

The journey from the border check to the main station was a slow trundle and we arrived later than expected. The first task was to sort out a travel card each and we were prepared for the process thanks to The Man in Seat 61 only to find that, like the border crossing, things had changed. Instead of a cash only process the new machines […]

Today would see our last rail journey of the trip, the sleeper from Sofia to Istanbul. As departure, obviously, wasn’t until the evening we had pretty much a full day to wander some more and visit the remaining bars on my hit list. It was a twenty minute stroll to the first bar of the day, 100 Beers. A bottle shop that also offered 4 […]