Bulgaria was quite different from any other country that we had traveled to, except maybe Croatia. We were only a bus ride away from Turkey but felt like we had entered another world. We must confess that is was nice to finally blend in the crowd.It was great to be back in a country where locals spoke to us in their native language. Though English is rarely spoken, and we couldn't understand a word that was said to us, at least the people didn't assume we we're t...

The overnight bus left Istanbul around 7:30 pm. We expected to arrive in the Bulgarian seaside city of Varna about ten hours later. We selected Varna, Bulgaria's third largest city, as our next target because it's said to be the capital of the northern Black Sea coast and a popular tourist destination. It seemed logical to add the Black Sea to our itinerary in order to round out the "Circuit of Seas" - having already touched or swam in the Mediterranea...