Varne

Well, I don’t think Varne thinks of itself as a tourist destination. It seems that there may be some wonderful things to see, but we took a little while to find anything.

First, we paid the £5 per head fare for the shuttle bus, to be taken to the city centre and the Cathedral Assumption of the Virgin. Not the biggest cathedral we have ever visited but very highly decorated inside

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But this was the only thing to see really in the city centre. Even the shopping centres and markets were too far away from our drop off point for most people. So like everyone else, we were back on the bus within an hour and heading back to the ship. 

Back on board, we swapped bags and went back out again. There’s a beach is right alongside the port, so we packed the swimming stuff, but we’d decided we also wanted to go and have a look at a couple of Roman archaeological sites shown on our street guide and only 5-10 minutes walk from the port. 

First we found the site marked “Roman Baths”. Oh Dear! It doesn’t look like the Bulgarians are very interested in looking after their archaeological inheritance.

A little fed up, we were now ready to go to the beach, but since the “Roman Thermae” site was so close, we thought we might as well have a look, you never know. 

This time we were well impressed, what a fantastic site. I admit to not having seen many sites of roman antiquity, and therefore have nothing to compare, but I reckon this place must be one of the most complete, in terms of remains. 

It was great, you really could see where the baths were, and how the Romans would have moved around the building, pieces of pillars, even some of the plaster remained on a wall in the cellars. This site really amazed me. 

Apparently, somewhere else well worth visiting, (according to other passengers), is the Archaeological Museum. 

Now we really were ready for a swim so we made our way over to the beach. The beach is quite good, but the water is cold. We decided to try out our snorkels and goggles, which caused a few laughs and a little confusion. I’m obviously doing something wrong as my snorkel kept filling with water. But I did manage to see a couple of fish, and a little hermit crab pulling his shell across the bottom. I’m just gonna have to practice more. After our swim in the Black Sea (Cool eh?), we had a quick and very cheap drink in one of the bars whilst we dried off and we were back on board in time for our 3 O’clock curfew, as the ship was sailing at 3.30pm. Well, it would have done, if everybody had managed the meet the check in time. It seems one of our passengers was a bit late, and therefore the ship didn’t sail until 4pm. Oh oh! 

So that was Varne. Next stop Odessa.

If you'd like to read about our next visit to Varne (or Varna), click here