Bulgaria - July 2007
Dogrose

The hire car was delivered to our hotel on Sunday morning at 9.30am, a tidy little grey Ford Fiesta complete with cd player, radio and air con. It wasn’t the cheapest car on the list but at 336 lv for 4 days we weren’t complaining.
We were already packed so, after a hearty breakfast, we grabbed a bottle of water, threw our bags into the boot and, slightly nervous of our first driving experience in a country where not only do we have to try and remember to drive on the other side of the road but also have to work out road signs that are written in a totally different alphabet, hit the road.

Just for reference - our hotel, the Globus, charges a parking fee of 2 leva an hour (15 leva a day) which I presume is normal for hotels along the strip.

Once we’d worked out how to get onto the main road out of town, found the nearest petrol station and filled up, we headed off in the direction of Varna. It was a beautiful drive along a wooded, winding road which took us up and over the mountains and gave us some great views of Sunny beach and the surrounding coast line.
It’s the same road all the way and in good condition, so about an hour and a half later we were on the ring road skirting the edge of Varna which gave us our first decent glimpse of the city and port. The way through was well sign posted, in Cyrillic and English and apart from one confusing moment when the road looped and we appeared be be heading back towards the city, it was all fairly straight forward.
The landscape from Varna to Balchik was pretty flat and we had swapped our hilly woodland vista for fields of sunflowers, maize and various types of melons which were being sold at stalls along the edge of the road.

We decided to take a slight detour as we neared Balchik and pay a short visit to the holiday resort of Albena as a friend of mine has just bought off plan there and we were curious to check out the area’s investment potential.
We quickly decided that it wasn’t really for us. The whole resort is surrounded by metal railings with toll booths guarding the entrances and exits ready to extract money from private motorists. We exchanged our 4 leva for a ticket and drove into what the book describes as the most expensive place in Bulgaria, which possibly explains why the queue of traffic was quite short going in but pretty long coming out.
We passed through what looked like the centre of the resort, big wide sunny streets dotted with banks, a post office, various shops and the occasional night club and onto a long, winding lane parallel to the beach, lined with souvenir stalls and choc-a-block with parked cars. We eventually found a gap under the shade of some trees, parked up and made our way onto the soft, white sand.
The beach was certainly quite stunning and nowhere near as crowded as Sunny Beach. The whole place had a very relaxed, holiday atmosphere with people browning themselves on loungers, splashing about in the inviting blue water or working up a sweat playing volley ball in the mid-day sun.
We headed for the first beach cafe and settled down to peruse the menu with the intention of stopping for a bite of lunch. It was certainly more expensive than Sunny Beach with an average meal costing around 12 leva so we opted just for a couple of glasses of the local Bulgarian drink, Aryan, a mixture of yogurt and water which when served over ice is really refreshing. I do find it strange that no matter how hot the weather, ice is rarely offered with your drink in Bulgaria, you have to ask for it and you are usually charged a little extra.

Back in the car and the welcoming coolness of the air con we joined the queue out of Albena and onto the road for the last few kilometers to Balchik. A short, easy drive later and we were descending down the steep road to toward the port, pleased with the fact that we had completed our first journey in this beautiful country and hadn’t got lost once!