{"id":6,"date":"2019-08-21T19:31:34","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T19:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site21.blogs.americavip.com\/?p=6"},"modified":"2021-01-26T11:21:55","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T11:21:55","slug":"bulgaria-things-to-see-and-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/2019\/08\/21\/bulgaria-things-to-see-and-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Bulgaria — THINGS TO SEE AND DO"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Bulgaria, one of the larger Balkan countries, shares borders with Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey (as well as the Black Sea acting as its lengthy eastern coastline).\u00a0 It is perhaps the least-known among the countries in that region, whose history dates back to the Roman Empire, when a town then called \u201cSerdica\u201d (now Sofia \u2013 the country\u2019s capital) \u2013 became the administrative center of the Roman province of Dacia Mediterranea (the Roman era territory simply known as \u201cDacia\u201d is present-day Romania, just north of Bulgaria).\u00a0 Sofia\u2019s size was expanded during the Byzantine era under the rule of both Constantine the Great (306-337 AD) and Justinian the Great (527-565 AD).<\/p>\n

Afterwards, Bulgaria was dominated by the Ottomans in 1396 (bringing Islam into a mostly Christian Orthodox country).\u00a0 Such rule continued for nearly 500 years, until the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78), when Russian forces and local (Bulgarian) volunteers forced the Turks out of the country. \u00a0A principality of Bulgaria was created after that conflict.\u00a0 The country, which was an autonomous Ottoman province by the early 20th<\/sup> century, formally declared its independence in 1908.\u00a0 After Bulgaria lost territory in an earlier conflict with Greece, Serbia and Romania (1913), it entered World War I in 1915 as part of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Empire).\u00a0 As a loser of that conflict, Bulgaria lost territory to Serbia, Greece, Romania and the newly-formed state of Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n

Bulgaria (under authoritarian rule by the 1940s) sided with the Axis Powers (including Nazi Germany) during World War II, resulting in the Russians invading the country in 1944.\u00a0 After the end of that conflict, Bulgaria became a part of the Soviet Bloc, and remained so until free elections were held in 1990 (creating a parliamentary democracy).\u00a0 Bulgaria joined NATO in 2004, and became part of the European Union in 2007.\u00a0 Over the years, tourism has become a growing part of Bulgaria\u2019s economy (generating 13.6% of the country\u2019s GDP, with over 21 million visitors in 2014 \u2013 many of whom were from nearby countries \u2013 Greece, Turkey and Romania).\u00a0 The country not only has a variety of historic sites, but resorts by the Black Sea, and winter destinations as well.<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0\u00a0 although Bulgaria is a member of the European Union, it does NOT use the Euro as its official currency.\u00a0 Instead, it uses the Lev (BGN), which is equal to 100 stotinki (st.).\u00a0 This explains the pricing in this travel profile.\u00a0 Exchange rate:\u00a0\u00a0 1 Euro = 1.95 BGN;\u00a0\u00a0 US$1 = 1.75 BGN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bulgaria, one of the larger Balkan countries, shares borders with Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey (as well as the Black Sea acting as its lengthy eastern coastline).\u00a0 It is perhaps the least-known among the countries in that region, whose history dates back to the Roman Empire, when a town then called \u201cSerdica\u201d (now Sofia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-info","category-things-to-see-and-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contents.bulgariavip.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}