Bulgaria

January 2009-01-17

We are really excited here as we have just started to plan a trip to our house in Radoynovo, Burgas, Bulgaria.  Radoynovo is located South East Bulgaria and comes under the Municipality of Sredets.  A very small village with just 90 registered inhabitants.

This trip is taking a bit of organizing as we intend to spend the 1st and last evening of our holiday in Istanbul.  This may turn out to be a very  big mistake as we may be trying to do too much in the time we have but I wanted to travel to Bulgaria by coach, and take the chance to see some of the countryside and areas of Bulgaria.  This then gave me the opportunity to visit Istanbul which I have wanted to do for some time.

The holiday is going to be for 9 days 2 evenings being spent in Taksim, we have booked to stay at the hotel Grand Oztanik as this is close to the Bus Station and Metro.  As we don’t have too much time to spend in Turkey we don’t really want to have to do a lot of travelling on the day we pick up the coach to Bulgaria.  Because there won’t be too much time in Taksim, I have booked what I hope will turn out to be a special memory, a Dinner Cruise on the Bosphorus, our trips in April so keeping fingers crossed for warm evenings, otherwise as its a 4 hour trip the evenings dining could be a little uncomfortable if the night turns out to be cold.  If we get rain it really could turn out to be a special memory, one not to ever be repeated.

For the 1st time in their lives our two dogs are going to kennels and I’m not really looking forward to them going off and saying goodbye but the owner of the kennels sounds lovely and promises them loads of cuddles so I suspect they are going to have a great time. I keep telling them their going to prison but I know it’s more likely to be a fun holiday  and change of scenery for them.

Back to my Holiday and reason for the trip to Bulgaria

This is a trip to kill many birds with one stone and I hope I have left myself enough time to get all jobs completed, if not I’ll just have to plan another trip later this year.

This is my husband’s 1st trip to Bulgaria and towards the middle of our holiday it’s his birthday, so we have planned to stay in Burgas for the full week and take some time to play tourists and enjoy the trip  Plenty of time in the future to stay out our little house on the prairie, roll up our sleeves and get to grips with the renovation work we plan to do to the house.

Why the trip now?

For some time I have been itching to get started on our plans for the renovation of the bungalow and make a start on our plans for the future.  That means we need to meet with builders and to decide what needs to be done to the bungalow plus the best way forward with the renovation or rebuild of the Barn.  Then comes company registration, It’s really is  time that we completed the re-registration of our Bulgarian Company so this will be another job that needs to be put to bed.

But back to today, so far I have organised flights in and out of Istanbul, have made arrangements with a travel agent to pre purchase our coach tickets and am just waiting on confirmation of the coach company which I’m anticipating will be Metro.  Still need to organize hotel booking so browsing the web and trying to decide on the best hotel for us.

Making me a bit old fashioned and behind the times,  I had a little bit of a worry when booking flights online.   EMAIL TICKETS, up till now whenever I have booked a flight and go to the airline to get my boarding pass I have always had the comfort of handing over my paper airline booking ticket.  This time what I have is an email ticket and it doesn’t seem quite real.  I’m sure it’s a much easier way to book and confirm flights but I still do have 1% worry in the back of my mind that when I turn up the air hostess looks at my bit of paper and just laughs at me as though I’m having a joke with her.

So that’s it for now, look out Radoynovo here we come, well soon!

January 2009-01-30

Getting to the end of January – only two months to go for our Turkey and Bulgaria Holiday

Almost at the end of the month now, and getting ready for the wintery month of February, brrr, as you might guess I am not a cold weather person and a real sun worshipper. I just checked holiday weather forecast for next 2 days for both London and Bourgas, its looking cold with London expected to be 3 degrees on Sunday and Burgas expecting some snow and temperature again just 3 degrees.

At long last, I have now booked my trip to Burgas for April and with a little bit of help from members of My Bulgaria Info who kindly posted their recommendations, I have booked the Luxor Hotel in Bourgas for our stay in Bulgaria.  Organizing the trip took a bit of doing with flights to Istanbul, two hotels to book, a cruise on the Bosphorus, coach tickets to and from Bourgas and of course airport collections, but it’s done now so I can sit back and wait.  Did have a bit of a blip when getting quotes for the Coach Trip with Metro as the agent 1st quoted me a price of £130 for each person, so again back to My Bulgaria Info and the members for their opinions on this price.  However this turned out to be an error due to conversation rates in TL, Euros and Sterling.  Final quote is now £78 per person, quite a big difference and gratefully received.

This month I have added a picture gallery to the site, ready for the 100s of photos I intend to take on my Holiday in Istanbul and of course Burgas.

The next post will be in February, let’s keep our fingers crossed that we see a good amount of sunshine and that temperatures don’t get too cold.

Hope to see you back here in Feb

Bulgaria-Diary