Every January, the New York Times publishes a list showing places they recommend visiting in the new year. It’s always fun to see what locations made the list, how many places I have already visited, & dream about going to places listed I had never thought about visiting.

This year the list had 52 places & to my pleasant surprise, Bulgaria was listed. By the time the list came out, we had already started planning traveling by train from Berlin to Athens & added Bulgaria to our places to stop along the way.

The NY Times article mentioned visiting Plovdiv which we decided to add to our itinerary.

In case you want to check out the article, here is the link.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/travel/places-to-travel-destinations-2025.html

For a day trip to Plovdiv from Sofia, we were recommended to take the bus which is more reliable than the train & only takes 2 hours which is faster than the train.

We boarded our bus at 9:00 AM & reached Plovdiv around 11:00 AM. From the bus station, we enjoyed a pleasant walk to the Old City Center.

Plovdiv has many Roman ruins. The main ones are the amphitheater & the stadium (hippodrome). Most of the current town is built over the stadium which was about 300 meters long m, 80 meters wide, & could seat 30,000 people.

The ancient Roman amphitheater is still open & a grand place to visit. It can seat 7,000 people & is still used for performances. It reminded us of a similar amphitheater in Taormina on the island Sicily in Italy.

While at the amphitheater, we saw a thunderstorm approaching which quickly cleared out most visitors including all the school children. This exodus gave us the opportunity to enjoy the place almost to ourselves before the rain started.

The amphitheater is located in Plovdiv’s beautiful Old Town which has colorful homes & rough cobblestone roads. Because it rained, we didn’t explore the entire area; but, we found a cute shop where we bought some hand-painted, colored, wooden eggs.

We ducked inside a small restaurant for a nice lunch waiting for the rain to stop before strolling back to the bus station to return to Sofia.

Like many former East Bloc countries, Bulgaria is still trying to find its footing under democracy & capitalism; but, it seems to be moving in the right direction. I can see why The NY Times recommended this country to its readers.