Day 15 - Goodbye, Sky Hotel. We had a nice stay in Belgrade. The only direct bus to Sofia, Bulgaria left at 2:30 pm. That made it an especially comfortable and slow morning. We checked out of the hotel at around 11:30 am after our fourth satisfying breakfast buffet.
We availed ourselves of the free #59 bus to the bus station. We had already got tickets online. As they didn't collect the local station taxes, we had saved 600 dinar cash (US $5.80) to pay at the station. That gave us plenty of time to watch the comings and goings until our 2:00 pm loading time.
Our tickets were purchased through Flixbus but they had contracted with an existing company for this bus route. It was an uneventful but interesting trip across Serbia.
Serbia is not part of the EU. We had to re-enter at the Bulgarian border. It took a while. We got to the border when the sun was still shining at 8:00 pm. The first step was to stamp out of Serbia. Then we got back on the bus for the 300 meter trip to the other border. That took a bit longer as the official had to vet each passenger one-by-one.
Of course, we breezed through but as this border often handles refugee claims and entry from third country nationals, it took a bit longer. We saw that a few folks had a little trouble. We think only one couple may have been denied access. The border had signs explaining procedures in a number of languages including Turkish and Arabic. We drove onward at around 9:30 pm.
It was, of course, dark by the time we arrived at the bus station in Sofia in 10:10 pm. They must build in a lot of extra time into the schedule as we were due at 11:00 pm.
Google Maps showed our hotel as being 1.1 km from the bus station. As we'd been sitting for a number of hours, we figured it'd be okay to roll our one carry-on with wheels and carry our two backpacks rather than trying a taxi. It took about 10 minutes as we chose the Amar Design Hotel near the historic center of Sofia. We usually don't check into a hotel at 10:20 pm but they knew we were coming. Even the TV in our room expected us.
We toyed with the idea of going out to get some dinner. We did buy sandwiches and pastries for the bus trip and figured we may as well eat some breadsticks and cookies that were in our back packs and call it a day. It was an long, eventful one, but one that involved little stress.
