Rila Monastery and Boyana Church Full-Day Tour

Day trip to Rila Monastery with City Tour in Sofia. Minivan arrived well before departure time and was snug but comfortable enough. Initially, the guide was hard to understand due to loudspeaker issues, but these were eventually more or less resolved. Drive took about 2 hours to Rila Monastery where we had about 3-4 hours time to explore. I thought that was a bit too long. We could have left later in the morning or depart earlier. We were back in Sofia after 6 pm. The tour guide had a wealth of knowledge and made the tour of the monastery so much more interesting. The main church is beautifully decorated but unfortunately the interior was under construction. I thought that the history museum of the monastery was excellent and I recommend paying the extra 5 euro or so. On the way back we stopped at Boyana Church. Again, the tour guide provided an excellent background story to the church while showing photographs of the frescos. The interior of the church is breathtaking. Overall an interesting, worthwhile tour but with some minor issues.

Our guide Pavel (Pablo) was excellent: I learned so much from him. He was thoroughly well prepared and he shared a deep and passionate knowledge and understanding of the history and culture not only of the sites we visited but of Bulgaria as a whole. The monastery at Rila is astounding and Pavel explained it all from the unique and colourful frescoes to the origin and the development of the whole institution. If you don't go on any other tours you should certainly go on this one.

Nice excursion and both the guide and the driver (Simo) were wonderful, everything on time and enough time to see the monastery and everything that surrounds it. We ate something at the bakery and then went to have something at the restaurant they recommended to us and we regretted having eaten sweets and bread, the meat looked great and was very affordable.

We liked the tour a lot, both the Monastery and the Boyana Church. The guide Pablo was fantastic, he told us everything in great detail and his explanations were very enjoyable. I would dedicate 1 more hour of free time to it, or at least half an hour, because with 1 hour and a half it is very tight to see the museums and eat. Otherwise everything was perfectly organized.

wonderful excursion well organized with the amazing guide Ornella, who is knowledgeable, kind, and friendly. The guided tour is really well done. Highly recommended.

Our tour guide, Pavel, is very knowledgeable and personable. I highly recommend this tour if you are ever in Sofia for more than a day. The trip itself is very pleasant and, of course, the Rila Monastery and Boyana church are second to none!

very beautiful places, good organization, and the guide Diana was very kind, knowledgeable, and available. Despite a small personal issue (with her voice), she did not fail to provide explanations and anecdotes about the places visited.

Excellent travel experience with visits to two stunning sites, the Rila Monastery and the Boyana Church, both certainly deserving of their UNESCO World Heritage status. A heartfelt thank you to the Italian-speaking guide Ina.

We arrived very early at the meeting point and am glad we did. We tried to board the bus and were told we weren’t on the passenger list despite showing our valid ticket. We walked to another representative of City Tours who pointed us back towards the bus. We spoke to 4 people wearing city tours T shirts and none of them seemed at all interested one lady very rudely said “there are many tours you need to check your ticket” - pointing to another bus that wasn’t even displaying the City Tours logo. Eventually a guy told us he was our guide but not travelling with us. So we finally got to board the bus we had originally queued at. It turns out that despite booking an English speaking tour 9 of us were placed on a bus with the remainder being Spanish speaking (the lady at the front of the bus seems to have only a Spanish passenger list !). This ratio roughly represented the amount of commentary provided to the mix of customers I.e about 1 minute in English to every 4 mins of Spanish. I would never criticise anyone’s language skills as mine are terrible but if you pay for a service you expect to receive it. Unfortunately the journey was unbearable as the ventilation wasn’t working on a bus full of 50 people and an outside temp of 30+ C. After an hour the driver stopped to fiddle with the air con which did finally provide some respite although looking at the sticky tape, cardboard and even tissue rammed in to overhead ducts it’s little wonder that it again gave up the ghost on the return. The only reason this isn’t a one star review is that the monastery was stunning and our guide in there (Tuni) was very knowledgeable informative and fun.

This was an enjoyable day out from Sofia, all run very efficiently while the tour guide Eva (may not have spelt that correctly) was superb, managing to switch effortlessly between a variety of languages while being uniformly friendly and engaging. The monastery is definitely the main focus of the day rather than Boyana Church - you get a good couple of hours there which is plenty to have a good look round and explore some of the side paths off etc. Boyana Church meanwhile is pretty and has historically significant artwork, but it's definitely Rila that is the main draw. Overall a good day out though and recommended.