Originally Posted by
fjord
You only need one day to experience Rila Monastery. I see no problem with three days. For the Rila Monastery leave in the morning and come back at night. The trip takes no more than two hours each way. I would only be worried if it is snowing with 2'+ on the ground...in that case stay in Sofia. The only problem with snow is that it takes about a day to clean the secondary roads if it snows continuously. I've been there two times but that was more than 10 years ago.
Snow removal in Sofia (and other parts of Bulgaria) is extremely poor. Typically they don't do any road clearing of snow unless there is more than 10 inches on the ground. They may sand and then everything becomes a huge mess ( a bigger mess than it already is). But if you are not driving, then you won't have to worry about dealing with the mess (your taxi or bus driver will). It doesn't snow that much in December - usually Jan and Feb are the months for snow. But it may rain in December.
Walking here in the winter is always a challenge. Since they don't plow often, and people park their cars on the sidewalks all over the city and there is never enough parking, so you have to walk in the street and compete with the cars. Recently they have made an effort to paint the crosswalks with red and white stripes. In my opinion, this seems to do nothing except make the pedestrians a more visible and possibly concentrated target.