Saturday – Nessebar, Bulgaria
Nessebar charmed us today. We had a good feeling about the place when we arrived yesterday evening, but to have had a whole day to wander around the town has been an utter delight.
Nessebar old town is situated on a small peninsular attached to the mainland by a single causeway (with a road on it). It isn’t a very large place at all, but it does seem to pack a lot into a small space. There are a dozen or so small churches and countless Roman buildings in varying states of antiquity. Right alongside the quayside (which is so small it even made the Minerva look big), there’s a Roman amphitheatre, elsewhere on the island (which it seems like it is, even though it isn’t actually an island), there are similar ruins.
The place is clearly designed for tourists. Having shaken off its communist roots, Nessebar has lots of touristy ‘tat’ shops, bars and restaurants. This is usually enough to put me right off a place, but it doesn’t seem to detract from the quaintness of Nessebar’s small cobbled streets and oldy-worldy, wooden-framed, shambles-like buildings.
We bought ourselves a multi-ticket that allowed to us to visit five of the churches without having to keep laying out more cash. Some were more interesting than others, it has to be said, but it passed a relaxing hour or two. We walked onto the casueway to photograph an old windmill situated there, and after a light lunch at one of the bars that overlooked the sea, we spent the rest of the afternoon circumnavigating the outside of the island and spending a little bit of money in a couple of the shops.
The only downside we found was that some of the street-sellers and bar owners were a little bit aggressive in trying to tempt us with their wares… never a good thing. I was also rather fascinated by a large building in the centre of the town that advertised itself as ‘Nessebar Film Museum’. Having checked out its facebook page, where it appears to feature some genuinely interesting film props and costumes, it was a little disappointing to find it closed (it looked permanent, but I can’t be absolutely sure of that…).
We’d also hoped to visit something Tracey found on Trip Advisor, called ‘ECO-Bar By Michael’, which is, by all accounts, a fascinating place to relax and have a drink, with secret little turtle pools, fairy grottos and waterfalls and quirky corners. Sadly; it, too was closed. A local bar tender told us that it would be closed because it is out of season; someone else told us that Nessebar can get very busy in the height of summer. I can certainly imagine the streets heaving with visitors, and am glad that we were able to visit it when it was a little less crowded (shame about the eco-bar, though).
