DeathSlam

I was once a regular business traveller and maintained silver BAEC status for many years, but for one reason or another I haven't been on a plane since my last trip to Japan in 2019. A couple of months ago I finally dropped to blue status. But throughout this time I have been a keen reader of FT and had become aware of the BA holiday double TP offer and have planned a few leisure trips that when combined should get me to the 1500 TPs for gold this year. This is the first of them, MAN-LHR-SOF-LHR-LUX-LHR-GLA-LHR-MAN for 400 TPs doubled up to 800.

I picked Sofia because it was all the buzz on the BA Holiday thread and picked LUX because I had never been. If I had been trying to maximise my TPs I would have chosen another 80 point destinations as this trip was booked before BA changed the rules to only allow one exit from the UK. But I had already been to IST and OTP and this is a holiday as well as a TP run.

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Shortly after booking my original LUX flight was cancelled and I was booked onto one the next day, I rang up BA holidays and asked them to move me onto the later flight on the same day as the original flight instead, and to extend my LUX hotel booking by a night and move all the other flights on by a day as well. They did this with no worries. I had all the flight numbers, times and what I wanted ready before I rang, so it was just a matter of typing it in. I got through to BA holidays very quickly on the phone and the lady I spoke to was very pleasant. However once the confirmation of the change came through it was apparent that my re-arranged LUX flight was now in Y so it required another phone call to get that put back into CE.

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MAN-LHR
Arrived in plenty of time at MAN. Had to take off belt and shoes but went through T3 fast track security quickly with no secondary. Straight to the Escape lounge. I often went here previously even if I had access to the old BA lounge because the breakfast here is better.

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I got to the gate early as I was in 1A and wanted to make sure I could stow my luggage. There were a lot of firsts for me on this trip. It was my first time as hand luggage only. Also the first time using a boarding pass on my phone as I usually checkin at the airport to drop luggage even if I have already selected my seat. So this was also the first time I had ever turned up at the airport and just wandered stright through security without talking to someone first which felt a little strange.This time I also managed to bag Seat 1A and Seq001 boarding pass. Obviously 1A had been released at T-24 as no GGL had selected it and since I am a lowly blue I had to wait till T-24 to check in and select a seat. In common with all the other flights in this trip there were a large number of rows of CE on this flight and the rest of the plane was very full as well.

There were two crew cases above 1A, so early boarding avoided any problems stowing my large rollaboard and bulky backpack 'hand luggage'. Since I am used to travelling with a suitcase I had packed what I would normally have taken into hand luggage and it was rather a squeeze. I definitely need to work on my packing skills.

Second breakfast on the plane was an omelette roll. The champagne was from a full bottle that they opened for me. The pop of the cork got a few interested noises coming from rows further back. Champagne corks going off is a nice reminder that the holiday is truly under way. I didn't remember to look to see what the bottle was, I presume it was the 2007 vintage, but it didn't taste great, a bit acidy as if it was the NV version. Maybe my taste buds had yet to aclimatise.

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LHR-SOF
The SOF flight leaves from T3 so I took the airside transit between terminals. It was as cramped and uncomftable as I remember and made worse by now having more hand luggage than usual. But it didn't take long and I was through T3 security quickly. I had plenty of time but didn't bother doing the lounge tour, I was just happy to sit in the Cathay business lounge with a nice runway view. Got the obligatory dim sum and char sui bao. Their Rodier champage is from the bar and I thought tasted nicer than the BA offering I had on the way down.

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The gate for Sofia was at the other end of the terminal, so I headed down there in plenty of time. While waiting I spotted an FT tag on someone's bag and introduced myself. It was someone who has posted often on FT about their trips who had already met up with another frequent flyer they often travel with. Nice to meet other FTers in the wild. The LHR-SOF and SOF-LHR flights seem to be a very likely place to spot them Onboard they were both in row 1 whereas I was all the way back in row 7. The onboard meal was Thai chicken curry. Switched to the Californian Chardonay for the flight which was nice.

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On arival in Sofia I went straight to the metro. This is new, cheap, clean, safe and convenient. The M4 line from the airport stops almost directly outside the Intercontinental hotel in town (station Orlov Most, one before Serdica). Google maps doesn't seem to have yet been updated to the latest expansions to the undersground system, but it is pretty foolproof. To get to the metro just walk past the exit for the taxis and straight to the end of the terminal building, it is very eay to find, you don't have to go outside to get there. The carriages are reminiscent of the ones in Russia and one of only a few things that reminded me that it's not so long ago Bulgaria was a communist country.

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Unfortunately due to a lack of research before booking I was in the Hilton. This required a change to the M2 line at Serdica and then two stops to the station called European Union. Time for another first. Using Google maps on my phone with EU data roaming to navigate to the hotel. I know this will be old hat to most folks here, but this kind of stuff was science fiction when I was a kid. My mobile phone contract is £4.99 a month but still worked without a hitch. The Hilton is a very short walk from the station, no problem to navigate with a wheelie bag. But as a pedestrian you still have to enter via the car park.

The hotel was undergoing massive renovations at the moment so is somewhat of a disaster area (to the extent of having lift call buttons sellotaped on to the wall). Checkin was a bit problematic as they didn't seem to have a record of my booking and I was glad I had my printed out BA holiday itinerary in my bag that showed the reservation number.

When light dawned I found that my room had a view over the park and on to the Vitosia mountain. I had planned to go up the mountain, but the cable cars close on 1st November for maintenance between the summar and winter seasons. A guide later told me that I didn't miss much as the place where the cable card drops you off doesn't have a great view of Sofia, so you really need to spend a day walking to get the most from it.

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This is now Sunday morning. Rather than take the metro, I walked into town to pick up the start of the free walking tour. https://freesofiatour.com

It was a pleasant walk, a couple of kilometres. The dog walkers and other typical Sunday morning types were out in force making it feel like any other European city. The walk takes you past the National Palace of Culture (NDK in Bulgarian) which is a monstrous carbuncle of brutalist concreate architecture set in a rather nice park. It should have reminded me of Soviet times, but instead reminded me of The National Theatre in London. There is a metro station at NDK which has a fresco of the building in it which looks rather better than the building itself.

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The free walking tour is reasonable and there were a lot of takers. There were lots of other walking yours going on at the same time, so there were queue of groups at some of the spots, but at least we all seemed to be taking a slightly different route through the city and different amounts of time at each spot, so we weren't ever following another group. Apparently I was very lucky with the weather as it had been raining hard the previous day, but it was a pleasant sunny 20 degrees walking round, so I soon took off my hoody and walked in just a T shirt despite the locals wearing their winter puffer jackets.

I won't bore you with a long description of the tour. You can find all that out for yourself. If you get thirsty there is even a mineral spring underground that will dispense free warm water for you at various points around the centre. The tour started at the Palance of Justice and finished at the Nevsky catherdral near the Intercontinental. The finish point was handy as I had tickets to the ballet whose home is nearby. It is a smallish theatre, but the quality of the dancing was very good indeed. And the prices of the tickets were ridiculously cheap by UK standards. The ticket for this seat showing Gisselle was 40 Lev (less than £20). They are doing the whole of Wagner's Ring cycle on consecutive days there next year so that might be worth another BA holiday to Sofia. The area near the Opera house has plenty of nice cafe's and resteraunts.

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To finish the evening I walked to the other end of town for dinner at Cosmos restaurant.
https://cosmosbg.com/en/
I can recommend it. The food was good and the atmosphere very pleasant. It is popular with tourists but also with locals. I would advise booking in advance. You can use a credit card and English without embarassment. I don't think you will struggle to find good places to eat in Sofia.

Amuse bouche (radish)


Pre-starter (tomato and cheese)


Starter (Cauliflower)


Main (beef)

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The next morning was a coach tour to Plovdiv a nearby town and old capital of Bulgaria. (https://traventuria.com). Had I known, I would have booked this for the next day as the tour starts at the Nevsky Cathedral, but can pick up and drop off at the airport. The drop off at the airport is well timed for most BA flights back to London, so it would have been a more efficient use of time.
Breakfast was a delicious pastry from one of the many pastry shops en-route walking to the Cathedral from the hotel.
In the free time after the walking tour I chose to have lunch in the restaurant actually inside the ancient roman stadium. The food wasn't great (don't order the pasta) but the tomatoes in Bulgaria are ubiquitous and really tasty. The amusing pink stuff is taramosalata (just called tarama in Bulgarian). Given its location it is perhaps no surprise to find food options from Greece and Turkey on the menu everywhere.

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On return from Plovdiv I got line M3 across to NDK and then back up to the Hilton. This was a bit of a mistake really. I should have taken the metro to Serdika and back out from there. Like many other metro stations, what looks like the same dot on the map at a transfer station can involve a lot of walking as was the case here.

One of the few good points about the Hilton (I tried to find some) is its location next to a big mall. This has all the usual suspects, a food court and also a lot of really good food and wine retailers. There is also a small supermarket (Billa) that is well stocked with everything you might need. So I had a picnik dinner using ingredients from the supermarket including bread tomatoes and cheese. This also did for breakfast in the morning as the Hilton had been booked with no breakfast (which they tried to upsell me for £20 a night when I checked in).

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On my final day in Sofia I was already wishing I could spend more time there, so I am sure I will be back. I had lunch booked at Izbata Tavern. I won't put the link here because it was a terrible tourist trap place. It is well publicised in social media and through local agencies, but it overpriced and underground and the food is just OK, nothing to write home about, although the portions are large, so if you are a couple you might be able to use one portion for two people.

Tomato and cheese salad. Lots of it, but low quality cheese and sadly also low quality tomatoes.


Izbata special. Tasty enough, but these are cheap sausages I can buy in the supermarket.

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Before lunch I had a look round the public Roman remains which are quite impressive and you can see them for free in the underpasses around Serdika station. Then the archeological museum which was OK. I managed to spend an hour there, but others may struggle to spend as long.
After a bit more of a walk around the city and lunch I went back to the hotel and visited the geological museum in the park by the hotel. I like rocks but it was pretty dull, obviously designed as an educational museum for kids. It does have some very impressive (man sized) geodes if you are into that sort of thing. And (as it proudly claims) a number of reference samples which are the first of various discovered mineral types.

Anyway forget about lovely Sofia for a while, this is Flyertalk and you want to know more about airports and plane food...

The airport lounge at Sofia is fine. It's a contract lounge with the usual offerings. It is downstairs, head down the escalators as if you are exiting the terminal and turn left 180 degrees at the bottom rather than going through the exit that is directly ahead of you. The airport isn't large