Cheap Taxi

I arrived in Sofia yesterday morning. The first thing I needed to do was find a hotel. James, whom I had met on the train already had one booked so we decided to go to his hotel and drop the bags there. If they had an extra room free for me, that'd be ideal, otherwise I'd go looking but without having to lug the bags around.

The first thing we did was have a coffee and pull out the map I had bought in Belgrade to have an idea where his hotel was. We found it easily right in the centre and estimated it was about 2 kilometres from the train station. That was easily walkable but we decided we really didn't want to carry the bags and we'd take a taxi. So once the coffee paid for, we went to the taxi rank.

As soon as we got to the taxi rank, we were approached by a guy who asked if we wanted a cheap taxi. Smelling a trap we asked how much it would be to the address we wanted to go to. He immediately answered 10 Euro, pulling his it's-very-far-away-you-know face. Even in London, they wouldn't attempt to charge you that much for a distance you could walk! We thanked him and went to an official taxi. We were in front of the hotel some 10 minutes later and got charged 4 Leva: 2 Euro.

Moral of the story: unlicensed taxi drivers have an interesting understanding of the word cheap.