Blogs from Nesebar, Burgas Province, Bulgaria, Europe

Nessebur, Bulgaria Nessebur is a nice little port city that thrives on the tourist trade almost exclusively. The old part of town is billed at the Dubrovnik of the Black Sea. I have never been to Dubrovnik but I doubt the comparison is accurate. While Nessebur has beautiful beaches and interesting ruins dating back a couple thousand years, it mainly sports souvenir shops and cafes. After a leisurely stroll around the narrow cobble stone streets I spent time over strong coffee at a seaside café with friends from the ship. Then I heard music and wandered off to find a wonderful exhibition of local dancers and musicians in the center of a partially excavated ancient theater. The music and dancers in native garb was superb. My favorite image of the performance is of a ... read more

As those famous lines from the movie Forest Gump go,'life was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get'.This was going to be true about our visit to the beach across the road from our apartment complex.More about that shortly. With no great urgency to be up and about we enjoyed a little longer in bed than usual reading the kindle and listening to Newstalk ZB to stay up to date with what was happening back home in NZ(some things never change no matter where we are in the world!) We had bought what looked like bacon and packaging had appeared to read bacon in the local written word,from the Penny Market yesterday.It had been amongst all those other types of salamis,hams,etc etc that are stacked up in the chiller.It ... read more

Saturday 14th July 2012 Nice easy morning, breakfast (for what it was worth) across the road at the cafe then back to pack and do a few last minute things. Judy has assignments in for marking and is trying to mark at least 6/day. This isn't easy as they take a minimum of 30 minutes each and she has over 100 to do. We caught the local bus to the bus station next to the Grand Mall getting there with over an hour to spare before departure. We did wonder if we'd get away at all when we saw the bus come in, dirty, dented and not too smoothly. Obviously the inspectors were a little suspicious as two pulled up in a car next to it, checked the lights and indicators and spent some time with ... read more

Hi everyone!! It's been a few days, but I've reached the end of the first leg of my trip. I had limited access in Bulgaria, but I've kept a personal journal of all the sights that we've seen, and here is a summary. I don't have the exact dates of everything that we've seen, but all of these are in chronological order: MIKRE - A small rural village where Alex's grandfather lives. We met him and ate lunch at his house, and saw his goats - it was pretty funny, they were playing a game, trying to jump onto an old oil drum. ETERA - A preserved 19th century village mechanically powered by water. There is a very similar town like this in Ontario, I don't remember what it is called, but this place was ... read more

Weekends or weekdays..... life never stops in BG. The restaurants and bars are full, the food is really great. All the things I loved to eat and grew up on I've had the opportunity to taste again, various salads with grated fetta on top, a multitude of choices for the meatlover: grilled delicacies and spit roasts, a selection of exotic seafood from the Black Sea and much more. A standard 'small' drink is 50ml here, but the locals always order the 'standard' large of 100ml, served with a glass full of ice and a bottled mixer of their choice. Yes, they certainly can hold their drink around here. In some clubs it's possible to order 'hard' alcohol by the bottle, and the account is charged to the table. Many of the clubs which my cousin took ... read more