Varna, Bulgaria

Varna (Bapha), Bulgaria

Exiting the train station we walked 15 minutes uphill to our place, it seemed a little sketchy but all train stations tend to have that feeling. But once we passed the Port of Varna and rounded a bend we were greeted by a carnival and the sea. We have seven days here.

Four of the days we spent lounging on our beach 500 feet from our place and some days with an umbrella for $2.50 a day. We spent three days exploring.

Hidden Beach

Jim: Hey let's head to Hidden Beach today.
Me: Sounds great, let's take a taxi.
About a block outside our house Jim looks back for me and I am hobbling across the street, my flip flop broke. No problem, there is a little beach store on the main street. This is going to take forever as I bounce around barefoot for the next few blocks avoiding broken glass. I walk into the store, I hold up my broken shoe and the lady leads me to the flip flop section and says 40, are my feet that big..yes please...New flip flops and I am all set.

We start walking the path along the beach, while Jim says let's get up here and we will get a taxi. Instead of train fiascoes, it's taxis. Unable to hail one we continue to walk and walk....in new flip flops....don't let my smile fool you, I was totally bitchin' the whole way. Thankfully Jim is very patient with me as I alternate between shoes off and on because breaking in new flip flops takes time. He turns to me and says don't worry about it pancake, we will get a taxi home 5.6 miles later… sunburned with blisters and sore heels we make it home...NO TAXI!

After arriving home, both exhausted and not wanting to go out for dinner Jim cracks open a can of tuna, which is literally a half of tuna bones, skin and all. I can only imagine what he was thinking and how I was going to respond (a hungry Alisa is worse than a tired as hell Alisa). He did his best to present a scrumptious can of red tuna and he did a good job…along with the best peaches one could eat.

Tuna in a can!

As I hobble to bed....Jim says hey how about tomorrow we just go to "our" beach (500 feet away)...yeah no shit!

Sea Garden, Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship Monument

Another 5.5 miles today, but with the right shoes.... Strolled through the Sea Garden, tons of paths, flowers, monuments and places to enjoy the beautiful Black Sea. We walked it all the way to the end where we crossed a dangerous six lane highway of traffic going both ways. Up a steep hill and over 400 stairs later to the top of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship Monument, which didn’t seem so friendly, but the view looking back over the bay was amazing. On our way back we realized there was a tunnel under the freeway that takes you to the other side…so risking our lives was unnecessary, but I am sure we gave some Bulgarian travelers a good laugh seeing two crazy Americans running for their lives across the busy freeway.

Archaeological Museum, The Cathedral of Dormition of Theotokos and Bulgarian Food

Archaeological Museum Varna - we spent two hours walking around, it was definitely the highlight of the trip. As an added bonus, we were able to see the world's oldest gold treasure, known as the Varna Man. The museum is three levels with the first level starting early BC history…which was by far the most interesting. Thankfully the information and descriptions were in English. Then we made our way over to the Cathedral of Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral, where the architecture was beautiful and so was the church, but most old churches are.

After that we decided to end the day by trying a traditional dish at the Bulgarian Restaurant, Старият чинар. As I open the menu feeling adventurous and thankfully for English subtitles otherwise I am not sure I would have enjoyed my first choice of horse balls. My choices consist of: Duck Heart, Slices of beef tongue, Lamb Head or Pigs ear with aromatic crust. Yikes, I don’t think I can do this. The waiter recommended the Pleskavitsa gurmanska- grilled roasted mince meat with yellow cheese and smoked bacon and Veshalitsa from pork tenderloin, perfect, I’ll go with the tenderloin…that should count as an authentic Bulgarian dish since it was on the menu and the waiter recommended it. It was wonderful, unfortunately I think Jim’s was a combination of all of the above ground together to make one big hamburger patty style meat thing. It was okay dipped in a lot of red sauce. We tried.

Varna definitely has the feel of a beach town...the beach stretches out for miles. It consists of three levels of walking along the beach. The first is the street, which we only walked once, because half the time you are dodging potholes, people and cars. The next is the Sea Garden which was absolutely beautiful. It ran parallel with the sea, it was lined by beautiful planted flowers, paths that lead everywhere, monuments and sea views…even had a quiet reading area overlooking the sea. The last level was what I will refer to as the beach boardwalk, it was lined with swimming pools and waterslides, restaurants and beach bars all blaring loud music.

There is no shortages of Taxis in Varna but for some reason we couldn’t figure out how to get one to stop for us, hence the reason for our marathon of walking days. Varna was beautiful and was a perfect combination of beach and sightseeing…it was also cheap, $28 a day includes all meals, drinks and all activities for two.

Our nightly ritual before we leave consists of packing and me, double, triple checking passports. Jim checked our tickets and we were happy the departure was at 11:00. We planned to leave around 9:30 to hopefully find a taxi and avoid a 1.5 mile walk, but if we needed to we would be prepared. I looked forward to sleeping in a bit and having a relaxing morning. At 8:30 as I am sipping my first cup of espresso which surely will get me moving Jim says oh shit, the bus leaves at 10:00. No relaxing feeling, more of a panic, with all our luggage we are out the door by 9:00. At this moment I am thankful for our nightly ritual of packing. We head to the beach in hopes of a taxi...score! We felt lucky as we arrived at the central bus station and found platform 3. Ticket says luggage storage starts 30 minutes before departure....so at 9:30 when the bus arrives at platform 3, Jim checks with both drivers that we are on the correct bus and we load our backpacks under the bus, get our tag and get on to find our seats.

WTF...a lady is sitting in one of our seats so Jim kindly explained to her that those are our seats. She proceeds to say no she changed her ticket last night. I asked her are you going to Sunny Beach and she said this bus is going to Turkey. I looked at Jim and he says Sunny Beach is along the way. I do a quick google search just to double check. Jim has gotten smart and asked to see her ticket. As he does this her friends who are in the seat across from her get involved and start backing up her story, however she can’t seem to provide a ticket to show Jim. As the three of them go searching for the ticket lady, I squeeze into the seat and put her stuff on her friend's seat…Jim’s has friends too!

The ticket lady gets on and as Jim pulls up our tickets and approaches her she yells for everyone to take a seat, her booming voice gets everyone's attention and we slip into our seats. She started at the back checking tickets. The woman claiming our seats sat behind us and as the ticket lady gets to her and asks for her ticket she still can't pull it up. The ticket lady is scowling at her, her friends continue to glare at us and we smile because we are confident we are in the right seats. Once the ticket lady gets to us, she smiles and kindly says no you are on the wrong bus. As we do the walk of shame and smile apologizing for holding up the bus we exit and have to get our backpacks off before the bus takes off. Thankfully they are right in front and only a few bags need to be moved. The scowling ticket lady exits the bus and smiles at us saying the next bus will be blue and that is the one to get on. Five minute later the blue bus pulls up and Jim checks again with the driver who puts our backpacks under the bus. As we board the bus there is a guy in one of our seats and Jim kindly shows him our number and he moves in front of us. The same ticket lady gets on, Jim waves, and she skips right over us which I consider okay, you are now on the right bus. Why must this be so difficult? In moments like these, I stay calm and can only laugh because I don't really help plan this stuff and can only support Jim.

For the last four weeks we have been on the go; four countries and seven cities. Thankfully in an hour and half we will be in Nessebar where we will make our home for a month. After that it should be smooth sailing to our next destination. We are taking a ferry.