What do you do in Bulgaria?

7/24-25/2009

My first two days in Bulgaria were a nice break after Istanbul’s hustle and bustle.  Apparently, Varna is a beach resort type city, and so beach time is a must.  Coming in to Bulgaria, I had no idea what to expect, but what I found were large beaches, lots of sunshine, and a good adventure.  After arriving about noon the day before we were supposed to, and sitting anchored off the beach for the rest of the day, I was more than ready to go come Friday morning.  I woke up for the sunrise, and it was an odd change of pace to have the ship be stationary through the entire thing.  We were tendering until mid afternoon, which means that I rode the tender boat to shore.  Upon arriving, I set off down the beach with Jon and Jack.  The beach directly next to the road leading out of the pier had a big volley ball tournament going on.  There was loud music playing, an entire stadium type set up with bench seating and security, and lots of banners and side tents where the players would wait.  It looked very official, although I never figured out what it was for.  It was there until our last day in Bulgaria.  We walked past the games, and down toward the water, where we walked down the beach for a long time.  It was a very crowded beach, and there was a forest of umbrellas covering the strip near the water, some of them personally owned, but most of them “for rent”.  Basically, after paying a set fee for an hour or for the dya, you are aloud to set up your stuff under the umbrella you rented, and enjoy the small patch of shade.  It seems kind of silly to me, since all of the sand was equally covered in rocks and shells, and there was nothing special about the umbrellas, but almost all of them were taken!  The crowd on the beach consisted of what looked to be mostly vacationers, whether they were Bulgarians visiting the beach, or from other countries it was hard to tell, but there were very few locals.  There were, however, lots of extremely painful looking sunburns, very large old women in bikinis and men that looked pregnant wearing speedos, and naked children everywhere, some of which were a little too old to be going naked in public still.  That’s Europe for you though…
After walking for nearly an hour, we decided to stop and swim, as it was very hot out.  The water of the Black Sea was refreshing, and much less salty than the other places I have swam on this trip so far.  We got out and dried off and continued our walk.  We came to an uphill in the road that paralleled the beach, and decided to take it and walk back through the Sea Garden, a large park.  The road led us to a trail through trees, with an occasional view of the Black Sea and the MV Explorer floating off the shore.  As we continued walking, we passed little restaurants and bars tucked away, and eventually made it past some of the key buildings our maps showed.  These included the dolphinarium, the zoo, the reptile atrium, and a large monument of sorts.   We made our way from the park to the ship at 2pm, and while Jon and Jack returned to the ship, I met up with my “Wonders of Bulgaria” SAS trip, where we were taken to an old monastery set in to a limestone cliff, the Golden Sands beach resort, and the stone forest.
The monastery was very interesting, and we got to climb up in to the cells and had great views out over the Black Sea.  The Golden Sands resort didn’t really fit in, but I learned that the locals are very proud of it.  We were given an hour to walk around, and as we all got off the bus, everyone had the same confused expression of “what are we doing here?” on their face.  It felt kind of like a mini-vegas, complete with Eiffel Tower, but also in the mix was the feel of a spring break resort.  We all showed back up at the bus a little early, because no one knew what to do with themselves.  Next, we went to the stone forest.  The brochures make it look like some huge, amazing thing, but in reality, it looks a little more like a “world’s largest ball of yarn” type tourist attraction.  It is right off one of the main roads, and when we showed up, there was no one there.  We got an introduction from the guy working at the gift shop, and he told us that there are several theories on how the pillars of rock formed, but it was hard to understand his thick accent.  The only part I did understand was when he tried to tell us that touching the pillars would pull out all of your negative energy and fill you with positive energy.  We were given time to wonder around and explore, and another tour bus showed up with more SAS kids.
After returning to the pier, the ship still wasn’t alongside (or pulled up next to the pier), and so I waited with some of my friends from the tour – and about half of the student body on the MV Explorer – to get back on.  It was in the process of pulling up, but there was a long wait to get on, everyone wanted free dinner. 
After dinner, I got ready and headed out with Brook, Courtney, Lauren, Meredith, Logan, Sam, Shane, Eric, Anna, Andrew, Rudy, Emma and a few other people to the bars along the beach right next to our boat.  It was fun to be so close (we could see the ship from all of them).  We found a place that had seating in the sand, and music playing.  It was a really nice atmosphere, and after a little while, a bunch of other SAS kids showed up.  I don’t know that the bar was ready or so much business, but it certainly got it.  After a while, I decided to call it a night, and headed back to the ship with Brook, Lauren and Courtney.  My second day in Bulgaria was a relaxing one, full of walking through the Sea Garden and exploring some more with Brook, Eli, Jon, Amanda and Athena.  We made our way down to the beach and swam and rested and enjoyed the sunshine and another relaxing day.  It was extremely hot out, so it was really nice to finally make it down to the water and go swimming.  The evening was much the same as the last.  I went to the beach with Jon, Athena, Amanda and Eli, and there were a few other people we knew at the place we ended up at.  It was a relaxing evening of people watching and enjoying the beach.