Bulgarian Vistas A to Z - Albena

Albena

Albena Sand by John Rocha

There are lots of As  in Bulgaria.  But I’m going to start with Albena.

I’ve got lots of reasons for this but perhaps the most important is that it’s one of my favourite seaside resorts.

Of course it’s quite a famous resort so you’ll easily be able to find out lots about the facts on the Internet or in guidebooks.

Very briefly it was built in the 1960s under the previously regime as a purpose-built playground for people who were privileged enough to go there.

The main points about it were that the hotels were designed in such a way that they all had sea views and sunny balconies.

And there was a very big and wide sandy beach.

Now, this of course is still the case today but opinions can be a bit mixed.

The other day I was waiting for a trolley near my apartment and I saw one of my neighbours and she’s quite an old lady and like many of my neighbours was very well connected in the old days.

And she asked me if I had been on my summer holiday and I said yes and she asked me where I’d been and she said:

“Oh I don’t like Albena It’s always so cold and windy there”.

Well, I struggled to think of this description myself because in the last few years I’ve been two or three times and each time it’s been absolutely wonderful from the weather point of view.

Almost every day sunny, though of course an occasional storm if I remember rightly.

But perhaps the secret of all this is the time of year because Albena is near Varna and it’s true that I used to live in Varna and roundabout October it became extremely windy and very cold.

So it’s clear that it’s important that to go at the right time.

This year I went in August and I can say that every day was beautiful and sunny.

The best thing I suppose about Albena is that it’s a good family resort now.

I say that because some people like to go to very sophisticated resorts or to very quiet resorts and if like me you have a school-age child - my boy’s 11  - then you really have to go somewhere that’s child friendly and Albena really fits the bill.

You won’t find, I think, an enormous number of very sophisticated hotels though there is one new 5 star hotel and there are quite a number of restaurants.

Still, you’ll find that many people, as I do, tend to go for what is called an “all-inclusive” holiday - that’s a holiday where you book not only your hotel room but all your meals and snacks as well.

There are certain exclusions, for example, in my hotel.

While all the local drinks were free and you could drink wine and beer if you wanted all day long and have ice creams and so on whenever you felt like it, nevertheless, they excluded foreign drinks.

And this is for an obvious reason - that is because if people want to drink the type of cognac that comes from the genuine region of France then they’re going to have to pay a very high price for it.

On the other hand, if they are happy to drink local drinks, then, in this particular type of holiday you can drink for free.

And there are other benefits like barbecues available all afternoon so that you can be flexible about your eating and there are entertainments for the children.

There also are usually swimming pools within the hotel complex.

However in my case, we normally went down to the sea every day.

And it’s worth having a look at one or two tips.

Normally to go to the sea you’re going to hire an umbrella and a couple of sun loungers and for these you’ll have to pay.

Albena Umbrellas by John Rocha

Two sun loungers and an umbrella cost about six or seven pounds a day.

It’s quite important to decide where you want to do your sunbathing, because if you go right to the front you’ll see that there is a demarcation line, a rope or yellow material which is designed to tell people that if they don’t hire umbrellas or they have their own umbrellas and towels that they can’t come behind that line.

You’ll find that quite a lot of people either don’t understand that or don’t take any notice.

So if you hire an umbrella in the front row so to speak, you may find yourself with lots of other people who shouldn’t be there.

Albena, by the way is a very international resort  with most of the foreign visitors being Russian or Romanian as far as I could make out.

Bulgaria is very very popular with Russian tourists.

As I mentioned, there is a beach and this is really the glory of Albena because it’s a very fine sandy beach.

Another point is that the sea is not only very nice and warm but it slopes out very gently.

There are lifeguards on the beach and there are warning flags telling you when it is completely safe to swim, when it’s safe to take inflatable sunbeds or things of this kind and of course also telling you when it’s too dangerous to swim at all.

Albena Lifeguard Station by John Rocha

Along with the beach there are beach types of entertainment. There are motor boats, paragliders and all this kind of stuff and you can go bungee jumping and so on if you want to..

Albena Parasailor by John Rocha

One entertainment my family likes is mini golf or putting. In this particular activity my wife seems to be the best and beats us both comprehensively.

Albena Flowers by John Rocha

So that’s really my advice about Albena.

From my point of view it’s an excellent family resort.

It’s very near Varna if you want to visit a big town with all the big town benefits.

It’s also very near the beautiful Botanic gardens of Balchik.

Because Balchik is that such a pretty place I’ll probably give it its own entry one day.

So, as far as I can see that’s all about Albena.

One last point on a literary note Is that the name Albena comes from a female character in the works of the famous Bulgarian writer Yordon Yovkov.