Sozopol, the Bulgarian adventure

Part two and it is now Thurs­day – the day of Sam’s atro­cious bad luck. From the sun that came out as we went in, the rain that fell dur­ing beach time, the cakes that looked deli­cious and tasted ter­ri­ble and the 18:00 boat tour that left with­out us. At about 14:00 we real­ized every­thing we would attempt to do would some­how go wrong (even the game of Pool did!), fur­ther­more we nar­rowed it down to choices Sam had made. She is now lying next to me recov­er­ing from a bad dose of Shell­fish. So here is my chance to fill you in.

On Tues­day things were once again blis­ter­ing hot and beau­ti­ful; so as all good British folk would do, we went to the beach again – for the day. Walk­ing in the sea here you are incred­i­bly close to the wildlife (unlike in Britain). Around us we saw jump­ing fish and sea crea­tures alike. To round off our sun tan­ning beach trip we took a ride on a Ped­alo for the lowly price of 6lv (£2) per hour. Cycling out of the bay gave us some great views of the coast, includ­ing the old Sozopol town-wall and over­hang­ing restau­ran­ta­tion. It also con­vinced us that tak­ing the slide on the back of the ped­alo and swim­ming in the sea was not the best idea as we encoun­tered a num­ber of jel­ly­fish – both large creamy white and small and clear species.

The suns warmth did not has­ten and suf­fice to say we are both now a golden brown – even Sam who has never tanned before in her life. For an early din­ner we chose to eat at the ‘breme’ pec­topaht at the tip of the town look­ing out over the bay – the views were great how­ever the food not so. Our seafood salad, bacon and cheese skew­ers, grilled veg’, but­ton mush­rooms, “chicken delight” and choco­late pan­cake tasted pre­pared and man­u­fac­tured – entirely hor­rid and the only sav­ing point was the below aver­age 27lv price.

Wednes­day saw the weather turn for the worse, so the beach was out. This was the day of lit­tle shop­ping trips – liqueurs, wines, choco­late, wooden sculp­tures, post­cards and the GREAT WOODEN SNAKE! For lunch we stopped at a tav­ern look­ing place with the word “Mex­hana” over the door, there we ate a selec­tion of cold and sea­soned salami meats with chips whilst accom­pa­nied by two charm­ing cats – two of the many that inhabit Sozopol.

For din­ner we chose our restau­rant well – we did not want to waste another evening eat­ing ter­ri­ble food. This time we ate at ” Nep­tun”, another old estab­lish­ment along the Morski-Skali road over­look­ing the black sea.

For starters I had a veg­etable risotto and Sam had mus­sels in gar­lic, for mains Sam ate the pork kebapches (like sausages) whilst I opted for the rec­om­mended “grilled belted bonito” fish. And thus the fish came, it was whole – com­plete, head tail and all, but most of all it was absolutely deli­cious. My meal was larger than Sam’s so she ordered an extra shrimp shish kebap. For dessert we had fig pan­cake (freshly made this time) and a nougat ice cream – I ended up eat­ing both. All of this and a bot­tle of domaine boyar wine cost us 42lv (not 72lv as we mis­read). For me per­son­ally it was the best of the meals so far – it was a gam­ble that had finally paid off, con­sid­er­ing I was par­tic­u­larly wary of the con­cept of giv­ing some­one a whole fish to work through.

Part 3 now and here I am on the plane home – writ­ing the final chap­ter in the Sozopol entry for my blog, on pen and paper that is. I am now amongst yob­bish Brits that come for the sun and cheap booze at Sunny Beach & Golden Sands – they are a delight­ful bunch, sport­ing white jog­ging bot­toms, gold jew­ellery and the lat­est foot­ball strips.

To carry on from where I left off, Thurs­day evening saw us eat at the rec­om­mended fish bar,“Kirik”. For starters we opted for the Bul­gar­ian mus­sel and mus­tard spe­cialty (after they told us they had no black sea crab) and chicken wings. As Sam was ill and I felt a lit­tle under the weather we opted for two non-fish dishes; the mixed grill and meat­balls and cheese with sauteed pota­toes as mains. Our palettes were moist­ened by a Traminer white from the Trago­v­ishte province. All this set us back 37lv.

And onto our final day in Bul­garia – it ended as it had began – with rain and lots of it. We stayed in and packed for the morn­ing whilst watch­ing CNN’s ter­ri­ble news cov­er­age and wish­ing for the BBC. By lunch time we were bored so headed back to “Kirk” to try their infa­mous fish dishes now that we were feel­ing bet­ter. This time Sam ate the red mul­let whilst I opted for the Zargan – a long thin fish with a blue spine. Sam also tried the “but­ter­milk” drink which she had seen oth­ers have, it tasted like some obscure liq­uid cheese/bitter yogurt and was promptly pushed away. 21.50lv this all costs us and the fish was fantastic.

The rain didn’t let up but this didn’t deter us from one final shop­ping tour and photo spree. I have offi­cially been dragged through and around every shop in the old town. When finally my legs gave way we returned to the hotel to fin­ish pack­ing before hav­ing a card game of head-to-head Texas hold ‘em and a vari­ety of “strip jack naked” incor­po­rat­ing snap and other rules – we dubbed it “Paul wins” three years ago. The kind hotel man­age­ment let us stay in our room until we needed to leave – which is great con­sid­er­ing our flight was at 23:45.

We paid our dues and booked our taxi before head­ing out to the “wind­mill restau­rant” for our final Sozopol out­ing. Yes, here is ANOTHER para­graph about food – in fact this hol­i­day has been all about REALLY good food, cheap. We ordered some more spe­cialty starters – a serv­ing of caviar and sarmi – vine leaves stuffed with mince meat with a side order of gar­lic bread.

The fun didn’t stop there, for our main course we had the fab­u­lous Pork Kawarma that came in a hot pot on a plate of oil which once ignited cooked the food on our table for us and a scrump­tious suc­cu­lent Salmon in honey dish. This came as we over­looked St Ivan’s and the dis­tant hills lit up a bril­liant burn­ing red as the sun set behind them. For dessert we had the ice cream again. This was one of the great­est meals I have ever eaten and it was the per­fect end to our eatery-summer Bul­gar­ian adventure.

I guess I will now sit back and watch the rest of King Kong or do a Sudoku! Oh and here is a girl in a bag on the side of a van: