Balabanova All Over

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[Sveti Vlas, Bulgaria] Aside from the day trips to Nessebar and Burgas, I spent the rest of the week beaching with my parents in Sveti Vlas. I’d get up around 6:30 or 7 to for a run or do exercise a bit, then around 8:30 we’d get breakfast. Jana, wife of the couple how owns the hotel, makes dad these awesome open-faced sandwiches with ham, kashkaval (a type of Bulgarian yellow cheese) and… Read More

[Burgas, Bulgaria] When we woke up on Thursday, the weather was cloudy and dreary. so we decided to go to the nearby town of Burgas to check out the airport, where I will be flying out of on Sunday, as well as its famous seaside park. Burgas is the second largest city on the Bulgarian Black Sea (after Varna) and fourth largest in the country (after Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna). Its population… Read More

[Nessebar, Bulgaria] Bulgaria has nine UNESCO World Heritage Sites, all of them inscribed in the 1970s and 1980s. Among them are the Thracian tomb in Kazanluk, which I visited and wrote about in 2014; Rila Monastery, which I visited in 2009, and Boyana church, which I visited in early 2013. Coming to the Sveti Vlas with my parents gave me the opportunity to visit #4 – the ancient city of Nessebar, which is only about… Read More

[Sveti Vlas, Bulgaria] I was just six years old the last time I visited the Bulgarian seaside in 1987. I don’t remember much of that time, but my parents do. Going to the beach back then was not as easy. There wasn’t a highway connecting Sofia and the major coastal cities, so travel by car was slow and long. Back then, there weren’t many hotels, and the ones that were there were… Read More