Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, pairs a compact, walkable city center with quick access to open countryside and mountains, and a rental car picked up at Sofia Airport is a convenient way to see both. The airport sits around ten kilometers from the city center, and the drive in, via the Tsarigradsko Shose boulevard or a direct link to the Trakia motorway, typically takes about twenty to thirty minutes depending on traffic and time of day.
Bulgaria drives on the right, and nearly all significant roads, including motorways and many national routes, require an electronic vignette, a digital road-use charge purchased online or at border crossings and fuel stations and linked to your license plate rather than displayed as a physical sticker. It is worth arranging this promptly after picking up your car, since enforcement is automated and covers a large share of the national road network, not only the motorways. The Trakia motorway (A1) runs southeast from Sofia toward Plovdiv and on to Burgas on the Black Sea coast, while the Hemus motorway (A2) heads northeast toward Varna, giving visitors fast onward routes toward either coast.
Just south of the city, Mount Vitosha rises dramatically, and the drive up to its ski areas and hiking trailheads generally takes around thirty to forty minutes from central Sofia, making it an easy half-day or full-day outing. City driving in Sofia itself involves a mix of wide boulevards and older, narrower streets in the historic core, along with active tram lines that share certain roads, so a little extra attention around tram crossings is worthwhile. International and local rental desks at the airport offer a full range of vehicles, from compact cars for city use to larger options suited to longer motorway trips toward the coast or the mountains beyond Sofia, making it easy to match the car to the itinerary.