Yesterday I told you all about the Balkan Bites food tour, but that company organizes more tours, such as the pub crawl. Before we get to that story though, I have to tell you about our search for the Monkey bar first. After our food tour we wanted to get a drink somewhere, and we both thought a sky bar would be nice.

No Monkey Bar or Sky Bar in Sofia

I could only find the Monkey Bar, which was a pretty far walk but would totally be worth it at 18 stories high. When we arrived at the building though, the receptionist told us it was closed and it seemed like it was closed forever. Grr! That was a let-down, but it did bring us to this other place, which was a library cafe called Peroto Literature Club in the Culture Palace with stairs with books, couches with books and mainly everything with books, all in this cultural building laying on a huge square.

It was really a place locals would go to, there were many students, people reading books, and then there were two girls totally getting a nice boozy buzz because it was happy hour between 4 and 6 and the already half prices cocktails (in our minds) were discounted with another 50 percent, meaning I had a Green Eyes, Eden and a Tequila Sunrise for 2,50 euros each. Insane. They just used Bols and Bacardi and fresh fruits to make them, so I do not know how they did it, but they did, and it was amazing.

We sat there for a while, but then we got hungry. They offered some nuts, but that was not enough for us after walking and being in the cold for many hours. So, we decided to look on TripAdvisor where we should eat. Thankfully we were very close to this hit called Aubergine, so we went there. It was a bit odd at first, as it is in a dark little street and we got a room with three tables, so it was not really private but it felt a bit homey, odd, but the food was excellent.

Restaurant Aubergine; odd but excellent

I had an amazing Quinoa salad and chocolate cake for dessert, while L had very good chicken breast with honey and cashews and she shared the dessert with me. It was excellent food, but the atmosphere was a bit odd, it was a hollow room and at some point there was this man sitting at the other table, eating alone, and that felt a bit weird. Or to describe it in L’s words; “this could be the start of an excellent porn movie”.

Anyway, after our dinner we had to go back to the park where we would start the pub crawl, and it was nice. The tour guides were good people, and we paid about 10 euros a person for this tour. Even though we did not drink beer like the rest, we were offered wine and even a Bacardi coke instead, which was awesome. First we went to a pretty normal bar, but after that we ended up in an ‘illegal’ place where you just had to knock on a door and they would play piano at some point, we both really loved it there, had a shot of who knows what and just enjoyed the atmosphere.

Apartment

After that the group went to Apartment, which is an art project and a bar in one, consisting out of all these separate apartments with all different kind of rooms. It was a nice concept, but there were a lot of couples there being very cosy. Nothing too crazy, but I did feel like things could easily really go out of hand hihi, but that could have been my dirty mind too of course.

Anyway, when we were sitting in our own little apartment, we received a ball of chocolate to eat, which sound awesome but it was actually filled with something that we both really disliked, some kind of raisinpaste, I do not know. And the Germans were taking up all the space on the couch, so we were not sitting comfortably. We decided to get a cab and go to our hotel. It was 12 o clock, we had to leave at 8, so we both wanted to call it a day.

We went home, and after a good night of sleep we took the flight back to Eindhoven (which was delayed by one hour again). We both really enjoyed the trip, we have some amazing snowy pictures to share with our family, friends and random Facebook followers and most of all we have some good memories to look back to. Plus; L will be joining me and my parents for a trip to Thessaloniki in the new year, so I am glad we are good travel buddies. Yay.