Quest Bulgaria Property and Lifestyle Magazine

As thoughts are definitely centred on holiday time, this is a great moment to take a few days away to travel over the border and check out the beautiful town of Chania on the Greek island of Crete. If you prefer lazing at home avoiding the masses and the heat, yet are still looking for wonderful weather out of season, then Crete is an excellent choice as even the winters are mild. Old and modern meet here to create a wonderful blend and appeal.

If you thought that cafe culture was developed in Bulgaria, you should head for the Greek Islands to see how far cafe culture really has come. The Greeks have turned it into an art! Cafes abound on every street, fishing village and promenades.

 

Just over the Bulgarian border in Eastern Macedonia, the city of Stip is home to 52,000 people making it the region’s second largest city. As a key educational, cultural, and economic centre Stip makes an interesting place to visit. It lies on the banks of two rivers, the Bregalnica and the Otinja, surrounded by hills but dominated by the Isar hill where a medieval fortress once protected the city’s inhabitants. Stip is not a city, which boasts about its culture and heritage and consequently most visitors pass it by en route for the capital Skopje, however it is an attractive town with warm and friendly locals and well worth making that stop over.

Travel further south from Bourgas and one thing is striking – the mass of construction common to Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast starts to dwindle until finally at Rezovo a coastal village on the Bulgarian side of the Turkish border, the beach stretches for miles without a single hotel or apartment complex. The reason for this is that being border territory, it is patrolled by police and a quiet laze on the beach is interspersed with cops asking to see your ID and the contents of your picnic hamper. Nevertheless, Rezovo, may mark the last bastion of an unspoiled Bulgaria, but it also marks the start of the unspoiled Turkish Black Sea coast.

The magnificence of Kavala is the way it ascends the foothills of Mount Pangeon in tiers like an amphitheatre so that nearly every resident has a glorious sea view. This is a city with a rich past, steeped in tradition, culture and outstanding beauty. As the second biggest northern Greek city and eastern Macedonia’s major port, it is the capital of Kavala prefecture. Kavala really is a hidden gem with plenty of impressive cultural sites and long, sandy beaches. There is also much in the way of accommodation and entertainment including some popular Greek festivals.

Ohrid is rooted in a variety of historical eras; remnants of its medieval Turkish rule, its period of Renaissance and the legacy of its communist past, still linger. In 1980 it was made a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The emblem of the Yugoslav motor industry, the Zastava is parked on every street corner, children race around on bikes and women hang out their freshly laundered washing across the balconies of the Communist blocks. One might even say that nothing has really changed around here since the Bulgarians occupied the territory in the Forties. This quiet sleepy hollow is renowned as the Pearl of Macedonia and possible the best known city in the Republic. It sits peacefully on the north-eastern banks of Lake Ohrid, home to 50,000 people. It’s streets offer some striking Renaissance architecture, some amazing hiking trails through the Galic˘ica National Park and a fabulous variety of places to eat and drink.

Edirne is the first city you come to once you cross the Bulgarian border into Turkey en route to Istanbul. Most tourists would be hell bent on hot footing to the Turkish metropolis to shop in the bazaars and gaze at the Bosporus, but a stopover in Edirne reaps dividends. It is full of historic mosques, ancient bridges and the former palaces of the Sultans.