Seven Lakes are worth it! - Rila Monastery was a beautiful stop on the mountain. 30 mins is plenty to see it and spend more time at the lakes. The ski lift to the top (30BGN return) was worth it, excellent views and the walk was outstanding. The snow really added to the scenery. Well worth the trip which ran on time and perfectly organised.

Great tour - Our tour guide was Apostolos. The Rila monastery was very impressive and gorgeous. The seven lakes require you to take an open ski lift up that lasts about 15-20 minutes, so make sure you bring a lot of warm clothes. The trek across the lakes is beautiful but since the last lift comes down at 16:30 we opted not to go see the higher lake since we might have run out of time. Overall highly recommend this trip

First time hikers pay attention... - Apostolos ,the tour driver was very good. Tour instructions were very clear. However , for a person who is hiking for first time, you need to be extra prepared because doing it is not tough but doing in time frame provided is tough. May be spend less time in monastery and save time there or may be ask to do monastery later .Overall it is really good. Bulgarian local hikers were very friendly and supportive.

Amazing trip - Amazing trip, all good. Perfect weather, people. Lovely experience. Driver helpful, the walking was ok, not very very hard, the lift was working so was amazing to use it :)

Rila monastery excursion and hike to the seven lakes - Beautiful excursion to the monastery of Rila, a sublime place worth visiting. Rila Monastery is one of the most famous UNESCO World Heritage sites in the country. We continued the day with the hike to the seven lakes of Rila, the jewel of Rila National Park with breathtaking alpine landscapes! A superb day accompanied by the guide Apostolos. I recommend this tour with your eyes closed.

The monastery was very beautiful and the 7 Rila lakes was amazing as well the walk is about 2-3 hours and very beautiful - The monastery was very beautiful and the 7 Rila lakes was amazing as well the walk is about 2-3 hours and very beautiful. The guide made a good atmosphere in the car and the people were also very nice

Easy adventure out of city - Traveling on the chairlift in a thunderstorm, the guide was entertaining, I made new friends and we walked Sofia together after your

I recommend it - I had a great time in Rila Monastery and the seven lakes. Unfortunately, the elevator was undergoing maintenance and there were no jeeps, so we had to go up and down everything on foot. But despite the extra tiredness it didn't take away from the beauty of the place. Our guide Apostolos was always friendly and helpful.

Think twice in winter. - We booked this tour after doing the Free Sofia Tour which recommended it. Picked up in the morning, there are 6, that's very nice. We went to the Monastery of Rila, which is very beautiful, a little less than 1 hour on site to go around nicely. Our guide is adorable, really nice and speaks very good English! The second part goes to the 7 lakes. It is mid/late November and there is snow. No problem in principle, but once we are upstairs we are stuck because the car slides, impossible to turn around or go back, the elevator does not work (already the day before) and the famous jeep (indicated on the site) to climb in this situation do not exist. We will go from "visibility is not good we must not go up" to "we will spend the night there", passing by the possibility of going down on foot to the nearest village (3 hours walk) to be recovered. In the end we will be lucky and someone will pass by and help us turn the car around the right way with his van ... Very nice driver, no worries, but we regret the hour on the spot to feel stuck, without any obvious answer of type "towing" or "other car to come and pick you up". Especially since the agency seems to be more concerned about getting the car down rather than the safety of the passengers (we had the impression that our driver was being pressured +++ to get back down at any cost despite the fact that he does not feel safe to get us back on the ice). Finally everything ended well but we found that the security of the whole was quite limited in our case. Also, if you want to do this winter excursion really prepare yourself with good shoes and clothes because there is bcp of snow and if you are bold enough to climb with the guide, it takes about 1h30 without any indication of the slope of the hike (basically we make the chairlift road so we can suspect that it goes up, and down, dry). So in winter, beware, not on snow tires.

Not a fall activity - This is probably awesome in the summer, but in November it sucked. We didn’t know the lift wasn’t operating until we got there. We spent most of our time trying to hike up the mountain and once we got to the top, we couldn’t see the lakes. Got some pretty views as we climbed but it just wasn’t worth it.