Unsurprisingly the heat made us choose another early start and we headed out of town and up into the mountains for more duelling with the Romanian driving elite. The GPS was saying we'd need to get on a ferry, which I was a bit unsure of because we could have waited for hours and hours but the alternative was a four hour (minimum detour). Jane said the ferry would be a good option and she was right as it was, no pun intended, smooth sailing. The ferry ride itself was only about twenty minutes or so and cost about thirty euro. Far preferable to another four hours of driving.
We whizzed through customs and stopped just after the border to talk to the guy in the insurance booth to wave our green form at him to show we didn't need insurance and our EHIC cards to show we didn't need medical insurance either. We batted back the tattooed gentleman who was keen for us to exchange money from any currency to any other currency as long as he was in the middle of it somehow.
Lovely mountains. A great drive down to the capital, Sofia. We'd be warned to look out for awful drivers but after Romanians they seemed pretty good to us.
After landing at our hostel (which they'd done their best to hide from us) we were pleasantly surprised to see it was not what it could have been bearing in mind the word "hostel". It did cost us three euros to get the aircon control from the owner, but we'd have given him a leg * if he'd wanted because we were exceptionally hot. There was a separate small room with a novel toilet/shower combo whereby turning on the tap invariable caused the shower to start, wet the toilet paper and fly off hitting you in the face. When you're just trying to brush your teeth it adds an element of surprise that isn't always wanted.
Had a meal and cocktails with Jane's friend Philip (from her work) and his fiancée Desi until 1am in Sofia's town square. A brilliant evening.
A nice day all in all. Aside from being smacked in the face with the shower. Bastard.
* Jane's leg. I need two. One for the brake, and other for the brake.