Tours planned for summer of 2010

SEMA Express is proud to present to you an exciting folk dance and folklore tour we have organized along with experienced tour leaders Stefan & Bogdan Vaglarov. Tour length is 8 days and 9 nights, takes place in several of Bulgaria's cities - Sofia, Veliko Tarnovo, Koprivshtitsa and more. Professional folk dance teachers will assist you in learning traditional Bulgarian folk dances, ensuring memories and entertainment to remember this tour by!

For a more detailed information regarding this particular folk dance and folklore tour, feel free to browse the Tours section of our website.

In addition, we are planning to organize more exciting tours, related to the Rose Festival, held in the Valley of Roses. Those festivals attract more and more visitors each year, due to their unique style and tradition, reflecting the lifestyle, culture and soul of the entire Kazanlak region, and are held each year in the beginning of June. Please check back again soon, as we plan to release preliminary information regarding those tours soon!

Bulgaria - Macedonia tour

From 20th to 24th July, we had the most wonderful tour, although short, around some of Bulgaria and Macedonia.

We had a short stop in a village along the way to Rila Monastery, to take pictures of several stork (Konotori) nests in its center:


After visiting Rila Monastery,

we headed over to Melnik:

We could not miss visiting Rozhen Monastery as well, which is just next to Melnik:

Our next notable stop was Ohrid and a tour around the old town.

Coming back to Bulgaria afterwards, we had a stop in a 5-star spa hotel in Kystendil.

The tour finished with a scenic walk around Cherni vrah, Vitosha mountain’s peak.

It was our great pleasure to show our good Japanese friends a bit of Macedonia and Bulgaria, and we hope to visit even more exciting and beautiful places in Bulgaria, or anywhere on the Balkan peninsula next time!

We will be uploading more pictures from the tour, on our website soon!

Festival of the Rose in Bulgaria

The annual Festival of the Rose in Bulgaria, is one of Bulgaria’s most emblematic events. The festival will be held from May 29th till May 31st this year and while we will be sure to take a lot of photos, so that we publish them here for your viewing pleasure, you could also start planning your visit to the Festival of the Rose and see it with your own eyese!

We are capable of providing you with hotel reservations, transport, airplane tickets and guides for very good prices, as well as the warm-hearted service of our staff!

SEMA Express also has the pleasure to introduce you a new, attractive way to explore city sightseeings in Arbanassi, the old capital Veliko Tarnovo and the region – with a double-decker bus!

Sofia - Rila Monastery - Boyana Church - Sofia tour

Sofia - Rila Monastery - Boyana Church - Sofia tour

On October 11th, which turned out to be a very beautiful and warm day, we took a small group of Japanese tourists over to two landmarks of Bulgaria's culture and Christian faith: Rila Monastery and Boyana Church, who also appear on UNESCO’s world heritage list.

[Rila Monastery entrance]

[Rila Monastery yard]

The Rila Monastery has a very rich history (you should check out their webpage), but it should be remembered most for the fact that it played a huge role in preserving Christianity in Bulgaria during the 5 century period of Turkish domination, also in serving as a hub of knowledge and education in the beginning of the Bulgarian renaissance.

After a delicious lunch (beans soup and fried fish meals, prepared in the typical for the region way), we headed back to Sofia to visit Boyana church.

[Boyana church]

[Boyana church yard]

What Boyana church is remarkable for are the 3 layers of its building – each layer of which was built at a different period – and 2 layers of frescoes. We were not allowed to take pictures of the church’s interior, but it was amazing to see Bulgaria’s cultural and spiritual development in the medieval period, just from the noticeable differences in the two fresco layers.