July 16th was our first full day in Varna, and we filled it up with as much as possible. It all started with a great breakfast prepared by Desi’s Dad. Fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, etc to start the day:

We had a few stops planned for this day, including visiting Desi’s grandfather and friend Mihaela. The visits were wonderful and Desi continued her role as a translator with impressive speed. Here’s a photo I really like of Desi’s grandfather laughing as I try and take his photo:

We travelled to bazaars on our way back and bought a sweet honey dessert for dinner, and stopped in to visit Desi’s friend Mihaela for a while before dinner. She’s a great person, and has an adorable little girl. On our way back we stopped at a flower shop just under our apartment building that was being run by one of Desi’s former elementary school teachers. She was looking after a cat and her kitten, which I had to snap a picture of:

Sadly the mother has since died, but the kitten was adopted and still in great health. In Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries, there are many stray cats and dogs on the streets. The dogs have recently been sterilized to control the population, but the same isn’t true for cats yet. People with kind hearts will often provide the animals with food or shelter, but you’ll never see one that is well fed like Bungie (my cat) is here. More stories about the animals in future posts

Anyhow, the plan was to go out for dinner, but we ended up being caught in an awful rain storm (probably my favourite photo of the day, though):

We headed back inside and Desi’s dad (with lots of help from Desi) prepared a dinner fit for royalty, with many dishes that I had never tried before, and I liked them all. A great end to a great day!

I think we headed to bed shortly after this, sleeping well after an exhausting but very rewarding day. Of course much more was planned for the following day too; there’s never a dull moment in Bulgaria!

We arrived in the early afternoon in Varna, Bulgaria after a 5 hour stop-over in Vienna Austria. Desi’s Aunt, cousin, and best friend Nasi were all waiting for all when we arrived. At this moment I realised how great of a translator Desi was, and I had nothing to worry about for our time in Bulgaria A few moments later her dad showed up and drove us back to the apartment that we would call home for the time we spent in Varna.

We didn’t really have much sleep, but that didn’t stop Desi and I from heading out into the city to explore. We walked around some of the main pedestrian streets and ended up at the sea shore, and took some photos of each other along the beach, which I think turned out wonderful:

We found a nice restaurant on the sandy shores and stopped for dinner as the sun set. We tried a Bulgarian beer, Zagorka Gold which I liked very much, and Desi ordered us some fish and chips. The fries were standard fare and quite good, but the fish was a little unusual from what I was expecting:

The fish were small and deep fried whole. The way you eat them is simply break of the head (comes off extremely easy) and chow down on the rest. Tasted pretty good, to my surprise! Crunchy, salty fish that reminded me a little of popcorn chicken. Of course, you’re left with a pile of fish heads, which I also felt necessary to photograph:

On our way back we bought a giant cotton candy for 50 cents I believe and walked around the streets until we made our way home for some well-deserved rest. Check our the gallery for the rest of the photos from that day, quite the assortment!

I have to say there was a little bit of culture shock on my arrival, but I was quick to adapt and feel comfortable thanks to Desi. She did a great job explaining everything to me, and with her doing all of the talking I felt very comfortable. We did a lot more exploring and visiting over the next few days, with some very interesting results.

The 14th was a special day for a number of reasons. On this day it was exactly a year and a half since Desi and I started dating, and it also marked the first time our parents met. Mom and Walter picked up Desi from her home and got to meet her mother, and the visit was wonderful. Smiles and laughter all around, I hope this happens more often.

Our flight left close to 6pm and arrived in Vienna (connection to Bulgaria) on the following day, so I only have one photo from the 14th:

The 15th, however, was an extremely busy day! Check back tomorrow.

Home sweet home!

Got home at about 1am on the 12th of August, far later than originally planned. Our flight from Vienna to Toronto was overbooked and they were looking for volunteers to take a later flight with a connection in London, and were offering 300 Euro per passenger (just under $500 Canadian), so Desi and I went for that and our plane landed at 10pm, chasing the sunset across the horizon for a good part of the flight. After dropped Desi off and fighting through construction on the 400 I’m safely at home.

3300 new e-mails, I’m guessing more than 99% of them are junk but I’ll have some digging to do tomorrow. I have another long day tomorrow and jet lag to fight off but I’ll hopefully start putting pictures online on the 14th. My idea is to post everything that happened on the same day a month earlier, hopefully I can keep up with that pace.

Adventure complete.

Desi and I just arrived at our final destination, our fourth visit to Vienna. The trip here was a little fast-paced (I can go into details later) but we have a great hotel here for the night right next to the airport where our flight leaves in the morning. We’re landing just before 3pm in Toronto, and I can’t wait to be home. I haven’t missed home too much until now, but I’m sure we are both anxious to be home and see some familiar faces.

Today has been a great day so far. We spent some quality time at a beach near a resort called Albena, which reminded me very much of some resort beaches in the Dominican Republic (groomed sand and clean water). A wonderful end to a wonderful trip.

Tomorrow at this time I’ll be back at home, with much more to tell of our adventures, both good and bad over the past month.

The adventure continues for one more day