Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year from Sofia!  Hope everyone had a nice time over the holidays.  Too bad the Hokies didn't finish up the holiday season with a win for us.  Oh well, maybe next year darnit!

We had an eventful holiday season the ended with a trip to the Bulgarian Spa last week and then New Years was spent at a friends house.  I figured after Christmas Eve that New Years would be "low key"...NOPE!  We got home at 4am that night too!!  We are party animals...well, more like my husband is a party animal! This pup had too many 2 liters of Bulgarian beer it looks like...

It was great to get out of the city for a couple days at the spa, I loved driving to a different part of the country.  I thought the villages would be a little nicer than Sofia and it turns out they are actually in worse shape.  And they have soviet bloc apartments in these small little towns which totally surprised me.  I figured that was just a "city" thing.  I took a ton of pictures on our drive that I'll share shortly.  Also, another thing that surprised me on our road trip were all of the Sheperd's we saw with their flocks.  It was crazy.  I was hoping to see one in a long gown, but they were just in regular clothes.  One time a flock and Sheperd were crossing the road just as were were pulling up.  I couldn't get my camera out in time though. 

The spa was OK.  I didn't get a massage or anything because I was a little afraid..not sure why?  Maybe because of the language barrier.  We went into the indoor mineral pool, hit the jacuzzi, steamroom and saunce and even tried out the Turkish Bath.  Matt and I forgot our flip flops so we still aren't sure how we didn't manage to get Athlete's foot all over our bodies.  But hey, I'm not complaining!

We had an apartment for 2 nights at the spa, which was very nice and brand new.  Even smelled like new carpet.  The bathrooms were all set up to have mineral waters in the tub, shower, etc.

Above is a view of the little village that our hotel was in.  There was literally nothing in this village...I'm not sure if there was even a restaurant or bar.  It was teeny.

One day we took a drive through the countryside to a nearby village where there was a trout farm.  I wasn't pumped about having trout for breakfast/lunch but it was amazzzzing.  It was fresh trout cooked in this tile things with cheese and onions and this delicious sauce.  We got the name of the place and figure if any of you come visit us and we find ourselves out that way, we'll take you there.  It's definitely interesting.

BTW- if you notice Matt and I making funny faces in our pictures it's because 1) we take A LOT of pics of one another during our travels and it gets boring and 2) we call this face the "bulgarian."  All of the younger bulgarian women are really into their appearance and they are teeny tiny and wear 4 inch heals everywhere.  This is how a lot of them smile.  :)

Below are some photos of the country side during our drive.  We went through some really cool/scary mountain ranges.  Not sure if I totally trust the roads in the mountains here oh and there really are rocks falling here.  We saw a bunch a big rocks that had fallen during our drive.

New Year's here was crazy.  The entire city sky was lit up with BIG fireworks.  They literally went off for hours.  The continued to go off for the entire weekend.  It felt like we were under siege!  Crazy!  I guess there are no rules on fireworks here...which isn't surprising of course....I wasn't able to capture any of the fireworks though.  What I did capture (albeit not very well) was my adventurous husband doing a little late night sledding.  If you look realllll close you might be able to see him in action. When in Bulgaria-right?  Thankfully no limbs were broken and we didn't have to brave the bulgarian ER at 2am because let me tell you folks, that place is SCARY in broad daylight.  Hope i never have to go back there again!

In coming blogs I need to touch on stray dogs, soup kitchen, hookers and our new hobbies so don't let me forget!!

Happy New Year Ya'll!  Hope 2011 is your best year yet!!!