Leaving Bulgaria, we didn’t want to go back through Romania and everyone confirmed that the road back via Serbia was good, so we booked a hotel in Trieste and planned for a long day of driving. The road from Sofia to the border and from there onwards about 100 miles or so wasn’t so great, but from there on it was full-on autostrada and we made excellent time through Belgrade, across the rest of Serbia, and across Croatia back to Ljubljana. My friend Liz and I had been trading text messages to see if our trips might intersect, and we managed to rendezvous there in LJB for drinks and dinner. We showed her the cool kids bar and the excellent restaurant, where we had another (identical) Slovenia feast, and then Loren and I drove the last 120km or so to Trieste, arriving at about 2am. I’ll post more about Sofia itself in a bit…

PS: I’ve been putting together a map of the trip; it’s not quite done yet, but you can check it out here: http://maps.google.com/?mid=1185862802. Photos are gradually being uploaded here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bdwelle/sets/72157600934673287/