Balchik (Балчик) is a quiet seaside town and resort village on the Black Sea in Bulgaria. The town is located on a hillside with roads that wind down to the sea.
The Varna Ethnographic Museum is one of the biggest and best in all of Bulgaria. It’s well worth a visit. The museum is located in a beautiful Bulgarian National Revival house built around 1860.
The oldest part of Varna is the Greek quarter, where you’ll find the most historic parts of the city. Varna has had a Greek population since antiquity, when the city was known as Odessos, a mixed Greek and Thracian city that was later annexed by the Romans.
The city center of Varna is full of beautiful architecture along pedestrianized streets. It’s easy to walk this part of a city in a loop.
The Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral (Uspenie Bogorodichno) is the second largest church in Bulgaria and the most important in Varna.
Shumen wasn’t always located where it is today. Since being settled in the 12th century BC, the city consisted of a fortress on a hill three kilometers west of present day Shumen.
With a community of about 10,000 Turks living in Shumen, there are some interesting remnants of Bulgaria’s long Ottoman past.
In 1981, the Communist regime in Bulgaria built a gigantic monument on top of a ridge overlooking the city of Shumen, 450 meters above sea level.