Bringing Ivan Home - Days 1 and 2

Our family of four arrived home from Bulgaria on Thursday, July 23rd.  I will write the blog posts covering our trip as I am able to.

The three of us left Indianapolis on Saturday, July 11th to begin our journey to bring Ivan home from Bulgaria.  Our friend Ron took us to the airport.  We were able to get checked in and grab a quick lunch before our flight left.  All of our flights were on time.  The 90 minute layovers in each airport were more than enough time to get to the next gate.  We flew through Newark and Vienna before arriving in Sofia at 12:40pm local time on Sunday.  Nikolas did very well on the flights.  He colored on the first flight, watched Shaun the Sheep multiple times on the second flight and played a game on the third flight.  Austrian Airlines is great about giving the kids little toys and games (and gummy airplanes!) to entertain them. We also think they have the best airline food.

After going through customs and picking up our bags, our driver took us to the apartment where we would be staying for the first part of our trip.  We booked the Kyoto apartment through Sara Tours and were very pleased with it.  The location was fabulous!  It was just one block from Vitosha Blvd. and very close to our NGO's office.

We unpacked and relaxed for a bit before heading out for a quick dinner.  We wanted something quick so we stopped at McDonald's.  We never eat at McDonald's in the US, but the quality of food is a little better in Europe.  After dinner we picked up a few groceries and went back to our apartment. We went to sleep quickly because we needed to be up and ready to meet our driver at 9:00am the next morning to make the drive to Kocherinovo.