Albena (Albena)

Member Name: VegaZni

Product:	Albena
Date:	14/10/00 (409 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very cheap, Excellent beach, Friendly people

Disadvantages: Limited food choice, especially vegetarian

Albena is, without doubt, the most attractive of the Black Sea resorts. It may not be ‘blessed’ with a name like Golden Sands or Sunny Beach, but its wide 7km long clean sandy beach would suit either name. However, unlike the bland resorts to the south, Albena has a much friendlier and modern character.

You should choose your hotel location with care. With over 200 steps up to hotels on the top road, such as the Avrora where we stayed, a degree of activeness may be needed. For the less active there is a frequent, very cheap road train that runs continuously up and down from early morning to late evening, or you could choose one of the many hotels in the flat town centre, near to the beach.

The advantage of the higher hotels is their setting in the beautiful landscaped woods. In August the local beetles were migrating and the odd one or two took a shortcut through our room. The best solution was to guide them on their way and they just kept going.

The food reflects the resort’s rigid eastern bloc origin and although there are a lot of restuarants to choose from, most menus are very similar, with grilled meat, usually chicken or fish, found everywhere. Helpfully, they usually have picture menus outside as some are only in Cyrillic, German or Russian. It is worth checking exactly what is included when you order, as an overflowing plateful of chicken, chips, salad and vegetables may only be a ‘serving suggestion’ and arrive on the plate as a lonely looking chicken!

A 3-course meal for 2 with drinks usually added up to the staggering total of £10-£15. I would highly recommend the one Indian restaurant in town, which has an English schooled chef. The food was absolutely delicious.

The main street becomes a thriving tourist market every evening and cheap good quality but fake sportswear labels and CDs are abundant. Artists’ portrait stalls dominate the remainder, along with the o
dd digital photo studio to give you the ultimate holiday snap – any background and body you desire!

With little else to do than eat, drink, sunbathe and wander through the shady hillside woodland paths, a venture further afield was required to stop the boredom setting in. Trips to the beautiful church strewn Nesabar, up to the Romanian (Scottish born) Queen Marie’s summer palace and gardens at Balchik and a walk along the craggy headland at Cape Kaliakra are all worth the effort.

I would highly recommend a week here, but two weeks would probably require a deep love of laying on the beach watching the gorgeous girls (and boys) go by.

If you are considering crossing the border to Romania, be prepared for a wait of at least 4 or 5 hours whilst the opposing guards blame each other for the delay and then go and have another cigarette. Oh, and if you have forgotten the wellies and oxygen supply, under no circumstances use the toilet on the Bulgarian side...

Summary: