This summer was I guess different for all of us. Travelling was restricted, clubs in most countries were closed and masks became the „must-have“ piece of cloth that we carry with us every day.
This summer has been the first one after so many years that I have mostly spent in the Czech Republic, my home country. And it wasn’t bad at all! I visited a few amazing rave parties, hiked in the Czech mountains ( Krkonoše, Beskydy, and Krušné hory ), visited friends in the countryside, and was invited to a wonderful wedding in Moravia! Anyway, I am going to share with you my whole summer experience in some other article that I will hopefully write soon.
What I want to share here with you and remember later is our trip to Bulgaria. I visited Bulgaria last year, but for a completely different reason. I attended the Synergy Training – self-development course that was in a way life-changing for me. I have shared some ideas that came to my mind in this article.
In contrast, this vacation was intended to be just a relaxing one. This trip was completely unplanned and we basically planned only from one day to another and left things to happen. Which was for me personally kind of unusual, but great in a way. I loved that feeling, that I didn’t have to hurry anywhere and didn’t have any huge goals that I would need to achieve at that day.
Bourgas
Our journey started in a city called Bourgas to which we had a flight from Vienna. The flight was pretty cheap ( which was also one of the reasons why we decided to visit Bulgaria) – something around 20 € per person. Some random guy approached us directly at a bus station behind the airport and asked us, if we wanted to take with his brother’s car into the city center. We agreed with the sparks in our eyes and got to our first apartment super fast and for free. Our first apartment was very small but luckily central located.
There are 2 main streets in Bourgas where basically the whole nightlife happens. However, most of the bars and restaurants were empty. Either because of the pandemic situation or because of the end of the season. Or maybe just because not as many people come to Bulgaria as it used to be when my mum was a child and visited that place with her parents since it was one of those countries that people in Czechoslovakia were allowed to visit. We ordered some shisha which didn’t really work well so we asked the waiter maybe 5 times in order to make it work but he didn’t seem that he would understand it better than us so we just accepted how it was and enjoyed it anyway.
The Pink Lake (Lake Atanasovsko)
Bourgas is definitely much better during the day. Directly in the city next to the beach is a wonderful park which is followed by a bike path that leads to Lake Atanasovsko. This lake a very interesting place. It is a salt lake in direct proximity to the Black Sea. People put a healing mud on their bodies and bath in a super salty pinkish water. The experience of the pink water was especially cool for us. The salt in the water is so concentrated that our bodies floated on the water is they would weigh nothing.
We also discovered a night Greek restaurant on the beach called Zoe where we had our first lunch in Bulgaria. And for the rest of the vacation the best one. There was nobody in the restaurant (which surprised us but later on we realised that most restaurants are empty so it wasn’t any sign of a bad cuisine or something) so we were not stressed to spend there few hours just sitting and enjoying the view.
An interesting thing about Bulgarian dining in the restaurants is, that they bring different parts of the dish separately. Separate potatoes, separate salad, separate meat, and so on. They also eat chips with cheese.
Sozopol
For our second day, I planned a trip to the historic town of Sozopol. The day was not very warm which was perfect for walking around the city and exploring. We also did a small hike to the castle of Ravadinovo. We thought that it would be some historical monument but it was just an amusement park with a closed aquapark next to it. There was no bus going back to Sozopol so we hitchhiked back with some old guy that spoke a little bit Russian so I tried to exchange a few words with him in the Czech/Russian language. Sozopol is a nice place to visit but somehow didn’t impress us much. Maybe it was also because of the restaurant in which we ate our lunch. It was super expensive and the service was terrible as well as the food. However, I think that it had to happen because during the rest of our trip we really cared about the places that we visited for food and looked at the prices more.
THE ANCIENT NESSEBAR
The next day we moved to Nessebar, which is an ancient city and one of the major seaside resorts on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. Nessebar has two parts – the historical and the new one. We stayed in a cute hotel in the new part and had a great view of the city and the sea. I was to be honest a little bit disappointed with the ancient part of Nessebar because there was nothing to do. It was a nice place to walk around but everything looked so empty and abandoned that we didn’t feel much joy while walking there during the night. We spent some time on the beach the next day and did some workouts in the morning. We discovered one really nice supermarket with a great selection of food and ready-to-eat meals.
Sunny Beach – The hub for all people who love to consume
We dedicated the next whole day to the walk through the whole Sunny Beach which was an interesting yet not really pleasant experience. It is a never-ending beach full of hotels, restaurants, shops, and parasols. Most of the beaches were empty so it again looked a little bit like after some apocalyptic episode but in the end, I think better empty than full of tourists so we couldn’t even walk through.
The last day in Nessebar was intended only for the transfer from Nessebar to Varna. We found a bus that we didn’t manage to take, so we had to wait 3 hours for the next one. When the next one finally arrived, the bus driver told us, that he has full capacity, so he cannot take is. He lied to us, because he said, that the next bus will come in 40 minutes. No bus came. I was super angry and decided to stop a car. It turned out to be the most effective solution of that day. The driver was a young lady who is passionate about marketing and her hippie hip-hopper, who went to the Bulgarian coast to enjoy the last few sunny days on the local beach of Kara Dere.
After the bus experience in Varna, we decided to lend a car for the last 4 days and explore the non-touristic areas by ourselves. And again, traveling through the country in the car was just the best idea!
The Ovecha Fortress & the Stone Desert
First of all, we visited the abandoned (not surprisingly) Ovecha Fortress. The place was nice but we were not really ready for a longer hike and didn’t take any water with us so we just walked around for about 1,5 hours and came back to our car to have lunch.
After the Ovecha fortress, we visited the “Stone Desert” (Pobiti Kamani) which is a desert-like rock phenomenon located on the northwest Varna Province border in Bulgaria. It is considered the only desert in Bulgaria and one of the few found in Europe. The desert consists of sand dunes and several groups of natural rock formations which are pretty huge and surprisingly bigger than expected. We were supposed to pay an entrance but I really didn’t feel that it was necessary since the place was accessible from so many places where we could go for free.
Local Beaches
I really love to discover places where the local people go and beaches around Varna which we discovered were definitely those places. I would love to share three places that I really loved and which are worth visiting. The Irakli Beach, the Kara Dere Beach and the Rakitnika beach. All places were really magical and full of hippie naked people who apparently spend there the whole summer.
The Rakitnika Beach
We discovered this place just because of the Google maps. Three guys were surfing there and otherwise, there was no one else. At the end of the beach we saw some abandoned restaurant and a tent which was apparently occupied by someone because we saw some shampoo and toothbrush which didn’t look that old. But who knows.
The Irakli Beach
Irakli Beach is known to be one of the most beautiful beaches in Bulgaria for those, who love wild beaches, naked swimming and don’t want any crazy tourists around them. It is a really wonderful place which is definitely very vibrant during the summer and I believe that many communities gather there and share a wonderful summer experience altogether. It was also kind of abandoned but the temperature was only 22 degrees Celsius, so no wonder.
THE KARA DERE BEACH
We discovered this place just because of the hip-hopper who we met in the car while hitchhiking. He told us that Kara Dere is a wonderful place where we could actually also sleep if we had sleeping bags with us. The place was similar to the Irakli Beach but way smaller and with even fewer people. We wanted to bath but it was so cold that the freezing feeling in our bodies won and we just chilled on the beach and discovered the abandoned camping place.
The northern coast of Bulgaria
Most of the people that I know and who visited Bulgaria know the coast only because of its overcrowded touristic beaches. I somehow believed that Bulgaria has much more to offer and it turned out that my intuition was correct!
Cape Kaliakra
Cape Kaliakra is a long narrow headland in the North Eastern part of Bulgaria. The place is not only beautiful because of its appearance but also because of its intriguing history. It used to be a fortress which served to many different civilizations: Thracians, Romans, Byzantines, and Bulgarians.
It was very hard to walk there because of the strong wind but we managed somehow. I especially loved the contrast of the orange cliffs and the azure water. There were only a few other visitors so we basically enjoyed the site by ourselves with no tourists around. At the end of the patch, we found a nice restaurant which was (not surprisingly anymore) empty. However, I believe that many visitors enjoy their meal and the view there during the main season ( probably from June to August? ).
Bolata Beach
Bolata Beach close to the Kavarna village was for me personally one of the most beautiful beaches that I have ever visited. This beach is the only reserve in Bulgaria that includes part of the sea itself. A small river runs through the bay, entering the sea, and there are many caves in the rocks around. The bay is also known as an excellent diving spot.
When we visited the place, we met just a few families and people sunbathing but definitely no crowds. There are nice short hikes around the beach with wonderful photo spots. In the past, it used to be a military zone so it was forbidden to visit the beach. Luckily it is not like that anymore and we could enjoy those extraordinary views.
The Arch of Tyulenovo
The most northern place that we visited during this trip to Bulgaria was the arch of Tyulenovo. One can reach the place only by the car. Two restaurants and hotels are located right next to these wonderful rocks so we could enjoy our afternoon coffee with a pretty cool view. We had overall a very good experience with coffee in Bulgaria. Which is pretty awesome in comparison to other Balcan countries that I visited before (like Romania or Bosna & Herzegovina ).
Golden Sands Nature Park & Aladzha Monastery
We dedicated the last day to a walk in the nature park which is located 10 km northern from Varna. Zlatni Pyasatsi Nature Park is the smallest Nature Park (13.2 sq.km) in Bulgaria. The area is parallel to the coastal line, forms the west border of the resort Golden Sands, and reaches the Kranevo village in the north. I really loved to walk there because it was very cool to change the landscape after being the whole week on the beach. The paths were very well marked out so it was easy to orient there. Nothing very demanding to hike there though.
Aladzha Monastery is located right at the entrance to the nature park. It was established 11-12th century when the hermits first inhabited it. However, its caves were inhabited early in the Byzantine period, as the monastery was under the influence of religious teaching which was spread in Byzantine and Bulgaria at that time. The monastery caves were hewn into a 25-m high vertical karst cliff. We also visited two small catacombs, which are situated close to the monastery. The site is well maintained so for everyone who loves this kind of sightseeing, it is definitely a place worth visiting.
To put it in a nutshell – Bulgaria surprised me in a positive way and I am more than happy that I had the chance to discover this country’s beauties once again. I don’t think that I will come soon back since I feel that we discovered pretty much those interesting places enough, but in the distant future definitely yes!
