Welcome to Varna!

We finally were able to get off the ship in Bulgaria this morning.  It was pretty much what I had come to expect – very similar to Dubrovnik in the sense that it is a little tourist beach city.  This morning I had the SAS Highlights of Varna tour followed by the SAS Wonders of Bulgaria tour.  I’m pretty sure that after today I saw everything important from Bulgaria, and there wasn’t much to see.

We left the pier around 10:00am after getting everyone to shore using the tender boats.  First we went to the archaeological museum.  There are mostly old icons in the museum but the highlight exhibit is that they have the oldest worked gold in the world.  It was found in the tomb as jewelry for a suspected chief of early Slavic tribes.  Then we went to the center of Varna to the Cathedral of the Holy Assumption which is the centerpiece of the city and has really pretty paintings of icons completely covering all the walls.  Next we went to the remains of the Roman bath from when Bulgaria was occupied by the Roman Empire.  The remains didn’t look like much, but they were the 4th largest Roman baths in the empire.  Then we went to the Bulgarian folk museum which was a small museum with 2 levels.  The first level had all tools and artifacts from farming, fishing, and various other tasks that were done by Bulgarian villagers.  The second level had all clothing that was worn by the villagers which was really cool.  They had one area that had a whole wedding scene set up and we learned that they used to wear wool all year round which seems like it would be ridiculously hot.  After that the bus drove us back to the city center by the cathedral and we had about 20 min to walk around and eat the box lunches that the ship provided.  Kaitlyn and I ate the lunches on the ride over and then walked around a little to discover that there wasn’t much more to see in Varna.  I learned later in the day that all the good stuff was actually by the beach front and not in the city center.

After lunch the bus took us back to the ship and I immediately just changed buses to go on my next trip to the Wonders of Bulgaria.  First we went to the Aladzha monastery which is actually a giant limestone cliff with little cave like areas dug out of the side for 2 stories that were little cubbies where monks lived and prayed.  It was really cool to see and definitely did not look like a comfortable place for anyone to live.  Then we continued driving up the coast of Bulgaria and stopped at the main resort destination about 15min north of Varna called Golden Sands.  This was a ridiculous beach that looked like the Cancun or some other spring break destination of Europe.  There were bars everywhere and people drinking in the middle of the afternoon in addition to the gorgeous beach and water sports that they had.  The bus stopped and gave us about 45 min to explore the area but I definitely want to go back one of the other days.  Then the trip continued on to the petrified rock forest of Bulgaria.  This was kind of cool to see because it is a bunch of hollow limestone rock pillars that are in a big sand field and everyone hypothesizes about how they got there kind of like Stonehenge.  It was cool for a few minutes to take pictures but then it was kind of boring.  After that final stop we headed back to the pier.

When we got back to the pier the ship was moving from its anchor location to the dock so we all had to wait to be able to get on for about an hour.  We were late for dinner but there were so many people waiting to get on the ship that they held it late for us and so we were still able to eat on the ship.  After dinner I was definitely exhausted from my day of touring so I hung out with Kaitlyn for a bit before now, and I’m probably going to bed soon.  It is really funny because our ship is parked next to the Varna Yacht club and it is like directly out my window.  All these people are having fancy dinners on the 3rd floor terrace of this building so it is like right in my eye level out my window and I get to listen to the classy piano music they have playing.  I don’t have any definitive plans for the next 2 days so I’m hoping it will just be really relaxing!