We recommend flying into Sofia & from there taking a flight to Burgas (one hr flight - approx $50) then a 30 min cab ride to the hotel. We will be at the complex a week prior and will be able to pick up guests from Burgas as well. You can also rent a car at Sofia airport and it is a 4-5 hour drive to St. Thomas. You must have an international drivers license, you can apply at www.e-ita.org in advance. The driving rules are generally the same, except no right on red. Another option are busses from Sofia to the sea side but they typically take about 6 hours with stops. Lastly, you may fly into Varna which is a 2.5 hr drive from the hotel. We recommend searching for flights on SkyScanner then purchasing directly from the airline.
Semi-formal attire
We will be at St. Thomas Hotel one week prior to the wedding date. You are welcome to join us and explore nearby towns with us. We will be departing the day after the wedding for our honeymoon in Crete.
Check out our “Things to Do” tab. We recommend traveling prior to the wedding to catch good weather in Bulgaria and throughout Europe. Sofia Airport is a 3 hr drive from the northern Greece border and a 4 - 6 hr drive to Greece beaches (Halkidiki, Kavala, Thessaloniki, Thasos). Sofia also has roundtrip one-hour flights to Mykonos, Santorini & Crete for $50-100. If you would like to travel in Bulgaria, we recommend exploring the Black Sea coast towns near our venue. If you would like mountains or to hike, there are three mountain ranges nearby.
You can book directly via the St. Thomas Hotel website, Booking.com/other third party websites or we can book it for you.
We will have taxi information available onsite at the hotel. In Sofia, you will find taxis all throughout the city, airport & bus stations. Once you are in a town, you can walk almost anywhere. Sozopol, the closest town to St Thomas is only 800 sq miles.
Absolutely! Also, the hotel complex has an outside playground right next to the reception restaurant. :)
Yes, generally speaking, Bulgaria is very safe and the complex is in an isolated and secured area. As with tourists anywhere in Europe, we just recommend keeping your items close by when in big cities.
We are hopeful & optimistic that Bulgaria will remain safe, as they are part of the EU & NATO, and are making decisions that are aligned with their Western allies.
We will update this information as the wedding gets closer. So far, Bulgaria has approved for using the following vaccines: Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Moderna.
Bulgaria has one of the fastest WiFi in Europe and a lot of places (hotels, restaurants, cafés) offer free wifi access. If you would like to stay connected no matter the availability of public wifi, we recommend getting a travel wifi hotspot such as SkyRoam. Note - The outlets in Bulgaria follow the European standard so the plugs are different. You will need to purchase a travel adapter to be able to charge your devices. Travel adapters are only a few dollars from Amazon, Target, etc.
We suggest booking a hotel room with breakfast included at the complex restaurant. For lunch, we recommend dining at the beach bar below the complex or at one of the Smokinya beach restaurants (5-10 mins away - we love the food, bars & music there!). For dinner, we recommend trying restaurants in Sozopol (10 min. drive/cab) that offer fresh sea food & local cuisine.