Bansko, Ryanair Delay & Traveling Keto Bread!
Bansko, Ryanair Delay &
Traveling Keto Bread!
We've arrived in Bansko,
Bulgaria and loving this
mountain paradise which is
We've arrived in Bansko, Bulgaria and loving this mountain paradise which is the cheapest by far and least crowded, best weather place to be in high season Europe! We are renting a large one bedroom furnished apartment with balcony and pool, fast internet, great hiking, awesome sunrises and sunsets from our windows for 260. euros a month! I will give you more details once we leave this digital nomad haven and popular winter ski resort.
It is challenging to shift countries and a bit scary to head off to an unknown country, so I am glad it is working well as you don't really know until you do it. Our travel day from Barcelona to Bansko was an extraordinarily long one, that started at 6am because we had a lot of last minute things to do to first store our vintage camper. So proud of us for meeting our goals of remodeling the camper while in Barcelona!!
We got camper back to it's storage spot and headed to the airport extra early as this was our first time I think using Ryanair and there was a strike going on with their Spain crews!
There are so many warnings online about how strict Ryanair is that we even got new, small backpacks to make sure we had no issues.
But they were not fussy at all on this particular flight as we saw many who did not follow the rules and they also seemed very organized and helpful at check in.
We flew at the height of high season European travel on one of the last days of July, yet, the airport was not crowded at all and we had the BEST, fastest, easiest security check ever in all my years of travel! No one was lined up, they were super polite and efficient at BCN and we zipped through in seconds!
We were extra early ( being proactive for any possible airline problems or strikes), but our Ryanair flight kept getting delayed. We ended up having a meal outside at the same place we did when we arrived at this airport from Paris in early May. (Due to covid we do not like to eat inside an airport, but finding outside dining is often not easy, so we were happy to grab a chicken salad outside and away from people …..even if it was Burger King).
There was a LOT of sitting around the mostly empty airport, but as you can see by this photo taken near the gate we were waiting at for hours, at least it was beautiful.
Finally, more than two hours late, we got on our Ryanair flight to Sophia, Bulgaria. I had read that this flight is often delayed, so we were prepared. It was a very late hour to start a flight.
The seats on our flight were hard, not padded, super close together, so not comfortable and it was a fairly full flight of mostly vacationing Bulgarians who seemed extra patient. We wear good masks on all flights, when in crowds, public transportation and any time inside, just to be cautious and it seems to work for us so far as we have never had covid. Luckily, 99.9% of the time we are not wearing masks as we are not around crowds, are isolated and often outside not near others.
Finally, we arrive in Sophia at about 2:30 am local time ( which is an hour later than Barcelona time).
Then for the first time in all my years of travel, I am given a very hard time at passport control! It was very strange" and we seemed to be hassled a bit perhaps because we were American, or the woman was just having a bad night or maybe even my weight loss. ( None of these things were issues in our recent Paris or Barcelona customs arrivals). She wanted to know why we were visiting, how long we were staying and seemed extremely suspicious as if a 70 year old American woman tourist ( who has tons of stamps on her passport) is a huge threat. She wanted to see another form of ID, so I showed her my California and International drivers license. She held us up so we were the last ones to leave this area by a long time, everyone else was long gone by the time we were done. Travel drama!!
Luckily our driver ( private transport from Sophia airport to Bansko) did not leave without us, but he was on the phone when we finally got out of customs long after everyone else ( likely wondering if we were a no show and if he should leave). I was so tired I napped/nodded out most of the way and we all kept our masks on for the almost 3 hour drive ( despite being so tired of having a good mask on so long).
Finally we arrived at our apartment in Bansko at 5:18 am and a comfortable bed never looked so good!
The one bedroom apartment is very big and comfortable and the night watchman let us in. Despite the delays and the very long day, all went mostly, fairly smoothly.
The beautiful sunrise out our window also made everything look better along with catching up with sleep!
Traveling pants? How about traveling keto bread?
Sadly, despite how careful we have been, staying away from people and always masking up on planes or anytime inside or in a car etc, even keeping a distance outside as much as we can, we just got sick with Covid ( a bit shocked to see the PCR test is positive. Ugh! I feel horrible, so keep us in your prayers. If you know any way we can get Paxlovid here in Bulgaria asap, please let us know. We managed to avoid Covid all this time, but now it has caught up with us and we pray it does not do much damage ( as it has to so many we love). Not sure if we got it in Spain or Bulgaria, but this is likely not the best place to be with covid as so far we can not even find Paxlovid which is so easy to get in LA and makes symptoms 90% less bad and shorter.
