"how to move around" Sofia Transportation Tip by mindcrime

Walk
If you stay in the city center you will easily walk everywhere because most of the sites/sights are just in walking distance one from the other. Vitosha Blvd is pedestrian one with fancy shops and leads to the National Palace of Culture & a big square.

Bus
There are a lot of buses and trams, probably you wont need any. We used one just to get to the airport. The ticket costs 1 lev and you get it from the ticket (you need an extra ticket for a huge luggage)

Metro
The metro (just one line with 14 stations) isn’t very useful for the tourists but we stayed a bit out of the center so it was convenient for us. A ticket costs 1 lev and you get it from the counter downstairs before you go in. You cannot buy tickets for metro in advance. The most popular station is Serdica which is the central one, where bul. Todor Aleksandrov, bul. Vitosha and bul. Knyaz Aleks. Dondukov intersect. That is the city center with Sheraton and the Presidency. Behind them is the National Theater & Archeological museum, up Dondukov is the Parliament, the Sofia University (nice building), a must-visit cathedral Alexander Nevski and the ex ottoman palace currently a National Gallery.

Taxi
Taxi is a good/fast and cheap way to move away from the center. Watch out for some companies that charge a lot, sometimes 4 times up the going rate which is (in 2012) about 0,70BGN per km. You can check this before you get in at the side window of the taxi.
The most reliable company is OK Taxis. The problem is that there are similar companies like CK taxis (if you see their sign you’ll notice that it looks like OK to confuse you). They try to imitate the popular companies, they even have similar phone numbers (for a tourist is hard to know the real ones anyway) and they use to hang around hotels and popular sites like the train station. Of course never accept a taxi driver that comes to you and offer a drive.

Mode: AROUND
Type: Other