Sofia Park Tour with a bicycle continues.

Is it a park or is it a garden?

This time, I’ve decided to visit some of the remote parks, that are available in our City. Join me in Sofia Park Bike Tour #2!
Much to my surprise, the parks I anticipated to be neglected were, in fact, beautiful and well maintained. Conversely, those I had high expectations for turned out to be barren and neglected. It was challenging to believe that the latter were even considered city parks.

My latest YouTube video.

Come with me on the second trip around Sofia Parks with a bicycle. A close total of 20km trip around 4 officially considered “parks” in our city:
– St.St. Peter and Pavel
– “Ovcha Kupel”
– “Slavia”
– “Gorna Banya”

Compared to my previous video, here I wasn’t able to capture telemetry to display it. Something happened with my GPS data. I will make sure to fix this for my next videos. However, this time I will try to write down a bit more about the parks themselves from my perspective. You can consider this as Park Review 🙂 .

Park St. St. Peter and Pavel.

We start with this park as it represent my starting point of the trip from the inside of the city going outward.

This is another park which is next to a Church, that the name suggest, as the last park in my last Video.

This small park, despite hosting a Church, sits near a gypsy ghetto, leading me to believe it wouldn’t be pleasant for a ride. However, it surprised me as a truly enjoyable, clean, and well-maintained park. It features wide gravel pathways, several children’s playgrounds, lovely shade-providing trees for summer, and ample grassy areas perfect for picnics. Additionally, it’s relatively close to the city center.
It has a lot of benches for people to rest on and a nice open-air café in the middle, where you can grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the sun rays.

It is really small, although you can spend some time walking, with a bicycle, you can go around it in a matter of minutes and so I did, quickly continuing to the next park – Park “Ovcha Kupel”.

Sofia Park “Ovcha Kupel“

Following we have a longer trip between parks, as this Sofia Park “Ovcha Kupel” is located in one of the neighborhoods in the outsкirts of the city, so it took some time to get there. Fortunately there was a bike lane which made the trip relatively safe and easy.

I’ve had the chance to pass near this park in the past and I was expecting a really nicely done park with many trees and greenery and from the outside it looked big. In terms of greenery it definitely delivers. With some massive trees and lush vegetation, but unfortunately, the infrastructure was quite not really there. As you can see in the video, the available “alleys” were a couple rows of blocks, only going around the small park and that’s it. In the middle, there was no pave or gravel, just dirt alleys. Also its quite small.

Fortunately the park still looks really nice, almost like the idea behind it, is to connect people with nature. There are some really interesting kids playgrounds, nice picnic tables and benches and to be honest, felt really cozy, as if I’m not still in the city.

Moving forward, I decided to go through another park, close to this one – Park “Slavia”.

“Park” Slavia

Well… here I got really surprised. Not in a good way…

Park Slavia, called after the name of the local football team is located in the backyard of their own stadium, only a couple of minutes from the previous park. Since the football team is quite proud, as well as their fanbase, I was expecting that they are going to keep their park well maintained and organized. Oh how wrong I was.

Its actually difficult to call this desolate, forgotten piece of land – a park. No alleys, just some paths made from the people walking on them. There were trash bins and a couple of benches on the entrance though, at least to not litter the overgrown grass and to have some elderly people sit somewhere… The rest of the park – wild. No amenities, nor playgrounds. There was one part of a restaurant next to the park, but that doesn’t count.

There is one abandoned building. Unsecured of course, so anyone can go inside and walk around the ruins… Well I got really disappointed by this plot of land so I did a quick go around and proceed forward to the last of the parks that we will visit today.

Sofia Park “Gorna Banya”

The trip to this park was a bit exhausting, mostly because the park is located in a neighborhood, that has some elevation compared to the other parks, so it was a lot of climbing. This neighborhood, previously a neighboring village next to the city is right underneath the sкirts of “Lulin Mountain” and as you might expect, it was not really close. There was a bike lane on 50% of the trip there, so the last 50% you can say was a survival game.
I had to cross the main road that circles around the city and there was some heavy traffic. Fortunately I was able to get there and be pleasantly surprised by the park.

Yes its a small park, smallest today, almost like a garden, but was really tidy with a playground, gravel alleys, benches, nice public fountain where you can drink some water from it and there were shops and restaurants all next to the park. On top of that, since it is not really close to the city, you can feel how much fresher the air was.

Interesting thing is, that there is a mineral water spring, where you can go and fill yourself some bottles for free. There were some people waiting while I was passing through there. I’ve marked it in the video.

Coffee Break

As I plan to create it as a tradition I took a coffee break and stayed there for a couple of minutes to breathe some fresh air and to cherish the calmness.

With this I completed the Sofia Park trip for today. I only had to go back home. Good thing that the road was going down, so I was able to catch some speed and finish quickly.

Hope, you’ve liked the park reviews from today and enjoyed the nice chill music. Please feel free to comment on the video and let me know what you think.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe if you want to join me around other park reviews. The Winter came here in Bulgaria, and it is currently snowing, maybe I won’t have the chance to create another video for this year, but once I get the chance, I plan go visit some of the bigger, most visited parks in the city for my next video.

Until next time, wish you all the best!

Cheers!

The music in my Video is provided free by:

Music provided by TheRelaxedMovement.
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