Varna

(20/21 August)
We made it to Varna the next day, after Joanna had tussled with a long long line of traffic. Obviously car ownership has gone up, but the roads haven't caught the trend yet. We had a little difficulty finding where everything was as the road signage was minimal. But soon we sorted our hotel and everything and went for a walk in the large Sea Garden, a lovely park with fountains & funfairs, museums & monuments.

The next day we got on with the tourist attractions to give us a chance to swim in the Black Sea before sunset. Sorry, no photos of that, or even of the cigarette littered beaches. Anti-smoking campaigns haven't got a lot of traction here.

But we did make it to Bulgaria's largest ruin, the Roman Bath House (2nd century AD). It would've been quite impressive in its day, but has sadly fallen into disrepair:

The prize bit would have been the public toilet which is apparently in reasonable repair and has dolphin fountains for hand-washing... but that bit was closed :(

After a quick wander through the main square for lunch, and past the cathedral we made it to the very impressive Archaelogical Museum. Apparently you're not allowed photos or guns:


We're not entirely sure why they have to specify no guns (banks do too - you'd think it was obvious), but the museum was well catered for english readers, and we learnt some very interesting things. Varna was actually the site of the first European civilisation, in 5000BC - before Egypt or Mesopotamia. There were examples of the first human worked gold in the world - and lots of it! Unfortunately the Black Sea rose 10m and the community had to be abandoned, until the Greeks set up there in 600BC. There was quite a lot of cool things from Greek and Roman times too.

The drinking challenge was also met. This Bulgarian drink was in fact 2 spirits mixed. One of aniseed lollies, and the other mint-ish (it was hard to tell over the aniseed):

This is one of Ben's favourites.