What a difference a day makes (well when it comes to the weather at least)

Today I said bye to the lovely Shalini, as she headed back to the UK from her visit to see me as I travelled along the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria. Typically today has been beautifully sunny and a lovely day for exploring. Sadly whilst Shalini was with me the weather was dull at best and tipping it down at worst. However, being British we didn't let a little thing like the weather put us off!

Shalini flew into Varna to meet me and we started our 'adventure a deux' there. Or first hotel was the Panorama Hotel which we thought had provided us with ready rolled straws to snort our cocaine...

But they turned out to be random Trip Advisor advertisements!

After catching up on a little of the sleep we had lost the night before due to Wizz air's ridiculous flight schedules we went for a look at the Roman Thermal Bath ruins 

and then we aimed for the History of Medicine museum which we never did find, and ended up going past the naval museum instead

and then we headed along the beach 

before stopping off for a nice long lunch then taking a lovely walk through the sea garden which is basically a big garden next to the sea.

Leaving the garden we headed into Varna where I saw my first switched on Christmas lights. When I crossed the border into Bulgaria from Romania I seemed to have stepped into Christmas and so I've seen many lights either being put up or ready to be switched on, but I haven't seen any twinkling away yet. So here is my first set.

After grabbing a quick drink and the obligatory piece of cake in Costa, we then went to see the cathedral and went back to the hotel for a rest before going out for Turkish food (as you do in Bulgaria!).

The following day dawned very wet indeed and so on checking out of hotel we got a taxi to the bus station for our journey down to Nessebar. The night before I'd introduced Shalini to the folk channel on TV which is exactly as it sounds, a channel devoted to folk music and dancing, Well, we were a little early for the bus but there is a big shopping mall next to the bus station so we stowed my rucksack in left luggage and went there to kill a couple of hours. We ended up wanting to kill the small children that were performing said folk music in the mall. There was some kind of competition going on I think but what I know is that Bulgarian folk music is definitely not our cup of tea!!

Unfortunately the rain hadn't really let up at all when we arrived at the very un-aptly named Sunny Beach just outside Nessebar, our location for the next two nights. Sunny Beach is the ultimate destination for holiday makers after two weeks of sun in the summer. Nothing wrong with that (providing you have good sunscreen) if that's what you enjoy, but it's not really my thing ('really?' I hear you ask!) and it's not Shalini's either... What is even less our thing it turns out is a destination such as Sunny Beach in low season. It was like a ghost town. Virtually every hotel, restaurant, shop and supermarket was shut. It was kind of eerie. Our hotel had a conference facility and so we think that was the likely reason for it still being open. Anyway, we made the most of it and that afternoon went for a walk into Nessebar Old Town which is a separate island attached to the mainland by an artificial isthmus. The Old Town was much nicer than where we were (some snaps)

but it was gradually getting dark so we headed back into the New Town and went for dinner before heading back to the hotel which was really unpleasant because much of Bulgaria permits smoking indoors - there apparently was a ban which was partially repealed and what remains is poorly enforced and so the smell within our hotel room left a lot to be desired!

The following day, despite the rain, we decided to brave Sunny Beach. 

Apparently the season closed at the end of October, so I'm guessing the algae has been growing in the splash pool from this water slide since then!

After walking along the beach for a little while, we were starting to get quite wet and so headed back into town for coffee and a cake. 

We decided we weren't going to be defeated by the season we were visiting in and that there had to be something we could do and thanks to google we discovered a winery that offered free tastings that said it was open! It was in the Old Town too on the side we hadn't explored the day earlier so that gave us a chance to see that too and so we headed back there. We saw a lot more of the island's churches 

Somewhere we could have had a traditional Sunday lunch (had it been open)

and yet another music video being recorded (no idea who this artist is either!) 

and eventually found the winery. Yay! But it was closed. Boo... So we wandered round the corner, looked in a couple of souvenir shops that had been opened because a group of 40 Greek people were visiting and luckily found a second branch of the winery that was open and doing the tasting! We tried a range of different wines 

including reds, whites, raspberry, plum and rose (the flower) but by far our favourite was the almond wine. I was expecting it to be a bit like amaretto but it wasn't at all. It would be amazing with Christmas cake. Sadly however, Shalini was travelling on hand luggage so couldn't carry that volume of liquid and there is no way I was going to lug a bottle of wine around for the next two weeks!! So we just bought a small bottle of the Nessebar wine to have at the hotel.

After that we went for lunch and a drink in one of the 3 places that was open in Nessebar and had what was described as breaded Camembert but really was like breaded Dairy Lea! Our hotel had a games centre attached to it so we decided to go and have a game or 2 of pool. Whilst both of us are in need of a little practice, never have I played against anyone who gets as many flukes as Shalini! Anyway, she won the first game, I lost the second (potted the black) and I won the third, so it was pretty even in the end, no? OK, she won! 

Yesterday, it was hammering it down when we checked out of the hotel. We had a rough idea of where we had to get the bus from and after making friends with some of the local cats at one bus stop (the wrong one), we found the right stop and somewhat soggily starting making our way to Burgas. I must admit to a little concern to boarding a bus run by a company called DiEs but we braved it! 

On the way down the coast we passed yet more deserted hotels and restaurants, the biggest being Sunset Resort. Check it out: https://sunset resort.bg Well both Shalini and I were amazed by this place. It was vast. It even had a water park attached to it! But all closed of course.

After arriving safely in Burgas, we weren't able to check into our apartment for another couple of hours and so we went and got a drink. I had a Baileys coffee as a) I needed a coffee and b) I'd picked up another cold and wanted the warming alcohol! After thawing out for a while in the cafe, we made our way to the apartment and eventually found it (no thanks to google maps that put us a street away from where we should have been but no entering random people's houses this time!) and it was with some trepidation we made our way into a pretty dodgy looking building in which the lift didn't have an internal door... However, we needn't have worried as the studio apartment we were in was lovely! Newly refurbished and it didn't smell of smoke! 

As it was time for lunch and still raining, we found a lovely wine bar and had a couple of glasses, some food (including cake of course) 

before braving a rainy Burgas which was so different from Varna and Nessebar in that there were lots of people there and pretty much everything was open! We saw some of the sights, including the Armenian Church and then headed to the beach and Burgas' sea garden

Before eventually heading back to the hotel to drink the wine we'd bought in Nessebar but didn't get round to drinking, followed by dinner at Happy Bar and Grill (a chain I had discovered in Ruse).

This morning we woke to the sun shining, which although it was cold made everything look so much nicer and so we went for a little meander before going to the airport to drop Shalini off for her fight back to the UK. She's made it safely home and I'm now back to my solo expedition. I'm currently staying in a hostel in Burgas for a couple of nights before I head off to Stara Zagora on Thursday. Thank you for coming to see me Shalini! It's been really fun to have a travel companion for the last few days! Just for you, a couple of kittens I saw today in the park...😘