Shopping Day in Bulgaria

I know I promised photos of the hotel today but I think that those are going to have to wait tomorrow.  The days are short here, with the sun setting at 5 pm, so I didn’t get back in time to do photos of the hotel.

Mom is feeling good and full of energy.  We have been out and about since 10 am today and now at 6 pm she still has lots of energy to keep going.  This has been a huge change.  She is also noticing that she is able to sit with much better posture.  You’ll notice in the picture how good her sitting is.  She has to work to hold the posture after a bit as her muscles aren’t used to being worked anymore but she can probably sit straight for an hour.  No other changes to report but those are a good start.  

Mom showing off her good posture, after a long day of shopping.

Today we went to one of the malls in Sofia.  Thank goodness for it being so wheelchair accessible!  The Serdika Center is a mall that opened in spring 2010.  This resulted in the mall being very clean and uncluttered.  It had three floors of stores and restaurants.  It was interesting to see how many of the stores were similar to those we have in Canadian malls.  Many stores were new to us however.  Nearly every store had somebody who spoke a little bit of English or at least could understand pointing.  We found prices very comparable to what we pay in Canada for things.  We bought a few little things for ourselves and did a bit of Christmas shopping.  Everything we bought was pretty small though as we had to fit it back into our suitcases!  When we had some gelato at the end of our shopping it was interesting to see how we could have been anywhere in the world, people in malls are all the same.

Here are a few pictures of our time at the mall.

Outside of Mall

It is Christmas in Bulgaria!  I noticed while we were there they were still putting up the decorations.  I'm assuming this means that they haven't had decorations up since mid-October like the Sobeys in Halifax.

Inside the mall.

The escalators going up the three floors.  There was only one spot for elevator for the whole mall but they were easy to find and very centrally located.

Some of the stores in the mall.

We had a good laugh on our way home from the mall.  In all the tourist books, websites and information we've read about Bulgaria we were warned about the taxis.  The books all say to make sure you check the fares before getting into a taxi.  After having been here for a week we forgot this rule when we were leaving the mall.  When we got back to hotel we were told our fare was FIVE TIMES the fare it cost us to get to the mall!  When I questioned the taxi driver he unapologetically told us he was an expensive taxi.  What could we do but laugh - he did not however get a tip!