Europe Directory of Tips, Stories, and Advice

Strukli – An Eastern European Treat Not to Miss

After being away from the U.S. for more than four months there are little things that I’m starting to miss, particularly when it comes to food (Reese’s and Heinz ketchup come to mind. I realize this makes me sound like a junk food addict, but I swear I’m not.)

Recently I smothered my sorrows with strukli, a fantastic comfort food found in Slovenia and northern Croatia. When I first ate layer upon layer of the pillowy dough alternating with creamy, soft cheese, it was like a giant hug.

A soft, gooey, cheesy hug.

It should be no surprise when we say we love our credit cards. As an American it is incredibly easy to get some truly amazing perks just for opening a particular card and (sometimes) meeting a minimum spending requirement.

If you have been following us for a while, you may already know about how we opened credit cards to travel and have been following along with our updates on how we’ve been doing. Since opening our first set of cards about a year and a half ago, we decided to open a few more. As we were doing pretty good on our airline points, our attention shifted to hotel points to allow us to have a nice stay in a few places around the world.

Our company of choice? Hilton. Our goal? 10-12 nights at any resort on the planet.

The first redemption was a doozy.

One of the things I was most excited about doing in Bulgaria was hiking. Logistically, hiking in the Rila Mountains made the most sense, considering the other Bulgarian cities we wanted to visit were nearby (Plovdiv and Sofia).

The Rila Mountains are the tallest mountain range in Bulgaria and have tons of hiking opportunities such as the 7 Lakes, Mt. Malyovitsa, Mt. Musala, and Scary Lake, just to name a few.

With these hikes in mind, we started researching towns in which to stay as well as more information about the hikes.

Planning this portion of our trip to Bulgaria was the trickiest, as not a whole lot of information about the hikes and the region is available online. So to fill that gap, here is some of the information that we found that I wish would have been available to us when we were planning our trip.

Before we arrived in Bulgaria, we heard from a lot of past travelers that the country is a difficult one to travel in.

Many of the stories always came down to the fact that the Bulgarian alphabet is Cyrillic based and does not use the Roman characters most of us are familiar with.

While it is true that the writing system is different in Bulgaria, the notion that it makes travel difficult is one we found to be a bit misguided.

Bulgaria is not difficult to travel in because of the Cyrillic text. It is difficult because there is hardly any infrastructure built for foreign tourists.

And when you compare the two, the latter is much easier to get over.

Strukli – An Eastern European Treat Not to Miss

Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik Review – A Perfect Stay

Seven Rila Lakes – Hiking Tips for Hiking in Rila, Bulgaria

Is It Difficult to Travel Around Bulgaria? Use These Tips