Memento amore*

It’s been quite a while since I haven’t written anything here, but it is summer time in Bulgaria – get it? I prefer to enjoy the café places with friends more than writing about them at home alone. But it would be really a sin to miss mentioning that one – Memento, my favourite place for this summer.

Although it is located at the corner of two busy streets in the ideal centre of Sofia, the feeling you get when seated there is as if you are at a seaside bar, or even, at a seaside bar on a Greek island. I’ve read an interview with the owner and this feeling was confirmed as it appeared that he is from Crete. So the guy has just managed to bring the same air of freshness and leisure to the noisy and relatively dirty centre of Sofia.

He tried it twice in fact, as there are two Mementos in Sofia, but I prefer the one on the crossroad of Gurko Str. and Rakovski Str. Even the trash containers on the street are not an obstacle to the nice view as they are fenced with some branded metallic cover with cute golden fish on it. Sorry, I didn’t take a picture of it, but look at their cappuccino (this one is grande, taste is very mild - the best coffee I’ve tasted recently! ) and tables , and flowers. And not as expensive as those at Costa and Starbucks, sorry, guys – Memento coffee is better and plus, you’re getting it served, not self-served!

And I loved the blue chairs hanging from the large tree above the café which were recently removed for some reason!

The inside rooms are very well designed and I guess they will be great and cozy in winter evenings – I will test them in October-November, you bet! And also, they offer a tea menu with quite a lot of choices. I went once with a friend who says the masala tea prepared at Paper cake is better… but as they have all other tea types in Memento except for masala, we couldn’t compare ;-) Oh, dear, I miss the feeling of that evening when I even declined a last-minute offer to go for free to the Sting concert in town (can you imagine? ) as it was sooo nice just to stay there and talk and relax…

And it is a great crowded lively place to go at a Friday night after a terrible day and a week and have 3 drinks and get pleasantly drunk with a couple of friends, hunting men and greeting life as it comes. So I have my great day and night memories from Memento, get your own if you like to!

*Hopefully, in Italian this could be read as a word play of ‘Remember love’ and ‘Love Memento’