Have you ever sat down to write a post and suddenly thought that nobody else is probably going to be that interested in what your about to say, but your going to post it anyway?
This is one of those moments for me. The thing is I went on and on about going on holiday for so long, I'd feel a bit odd if I didn't actually share the story of what happened when I was away.
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This is going to be long, and I took a huge amount of pictures so it might be worthwhile going to get a nice cup of tea (or a wee cocktail) and find somewhere comfy to sit.....
It was Friday the 13th, it was 6.30am, and I was standing outside my house in the freezing cold but I was the happiest girl in the entire world. I was on my way to the first actual 'holiday' holiday in 5 years.
I'd endured my bikini wax, I'd managed to squeeze almost all the clothes in the world into my suitcase and I'd even managed to not sleep in for the taxi picking me up.
Its really was a case of planes, trains and automobiles that day, 4 hours on the train to Manchester, 3 and a bit hours on the plane to eastern Europe and another half hour on a bus to the hotel.
We went to the Hotel Helena Park in a place called Sunny Beach (yes really) in Bulgaria. We arrived after 11 at night but the hotel had left the dinner buffet open for us, with a champagne reception, as they realised we'd all been travelling for quite some time. But in true Scottish folk abroad style the minute they had secured our All Inclusive wristbands we headed straight for the bar, I mean it was only half an hour until last orders! We we're shocked at how crazy the bar was people really going for it on the dancefloor and free pouring of free drinks. We'd found Nirvana :-)
The grand plan for this trip had been decided months ago, lay next to the pool drinking cocktails all day and have a bit of a giggle at night but nothing too crazy, this was supposed to be a proper forget the world getaway.
The first full day there was all about finding out the lay of the land, or in our case the lay of the sun loungers and to work out which were the best cocktails for poolside sipping. It didn't quite got to plan. The pool at Helena Park is beautiful. Not huge but a big enough and surrounded by plenty of loungers. Being the newbies we thought we'd hit the jackpot by getting the ones closest to the pool bar. We were wrong. As the name of the hotel suggests there is some park features i.e BIG trees, we ended up in the shade for most of the day. As for the grand cocktail sipping plans...well lets just say sugary drinks are like crack to wasps. We soon learnt that snoozing next to the Jacuzzi bit of the pool and bottles of water would be the order for the rest of the week.
I'll not go to much blow by blow of the next couple of days because they mainly consisted of this.....
Which was absolutely lovely.
Then it was my birthday.
I have said before that this blog is like a little diary for me so what happened this day wasn't exactly picture perfect but I'll talk about it anyway, my friends headed done early to get the good sun loungers sorted, i donned my most flattering bikini and filled up on pancakes from the breakfast buffet. But someone had forgot to inform mother nature of my plans, and it was cloudy ALL day :-( But not to be defeated I went for an afternoon nap and got geared up for my special birthday night out, the friends i was with had used some of their valuable baggage allowance to bring me a couple of presents to open. But i particularly loved the card and badge I got from one of them:
Star Trek and Gin. Whats not to love?
As we were making a night of it we asked the hotel if we could move to the earlier sitting for dinner, which was no problem. But then we arrived at our table and were a little confused that it'd been set up with flowers and a bottle of champagne. My friends new nothing so we went to check but it was definitely for us. the hotel wanted to give me a treat on my birthday, so sweet. And if that wasn't enough, after we'd munched our way through the dinner buffet the waiter brought out a little cake and, despite evidently not knowing much English he even attempted to sing me Happy Birthday, adorable.
After our lovely dinner, things went a little bit south. I was ready for a night out. my friends not so much. Now it could've been the 8 vodkas i'd had but I just walked off and had a bit of a sob next to the pool. Perhaps a little melodramatic, I know, but it was my birthday and I'd blooming well cry if i want to! Seems a bit silly looking back on it now.
Here is a lovely pic of the pool from that night:
But still you win some you lose some. I was determined not to let me get it me down, so the next night me and one of my friends went for a few drinks down at the beach bar, this wasn't included in the All Inclusiveness of the hotel but the drinks we're massive and during the (suspiciously long) happy 'hour' if you ordered 1 drink they automatically brought you 2. It was lovely.
One of the biggest things to to in sunny beach is to go for an evening out at Khans tent, a cabaret show in a big tent shaped building up on a hill above the resort. The show is really good and there is plenty of wine to make it that extra bit exciting ;-)
Here is a random selfie from the evening with the view from the hill. I have no idea why i'm green.
On the way home that night after a drunken stumble along the strip to get a cheeseburger we started chatting to a group of guys that were sat next to the pool. It was all a bit bizarre, they were mostly Ukrainian some were on holiday and some worked at the hotel. Its always fun chatting to people from other countries. They were a nice enough bunch, but sadly the hot guy from the animation team decided to disappear after a while but we kept the entertainment going for a while with me throwing my phone in the pool for the boys to go and fish out.
Speaking of my phone, it really was the ideal holiday companion, kept me connected to the interwebs through the hotel WIFI and completely safe to immerse in water, handy for really unflattering shots like this...
If your wondering its a Sony Xperia Z I use it to take all my pics. Best camera I've ever had.
Despite the sounds of it we did attempt sightseeing one day. We went to the local fishing village (read: tourist trap) Nessebar you could see it was a charming place with fishing boats, old church ruins and cobbled streets (and an amazing array of shops selling loads of holiday tat Ooo... I love holiday tat!)
As for the rest of the holiday it was all fairly tame. I got a hopeless holiday crush on one of the entertainers, my friends and I ate ridiculous amounts of food, drank a fair amount of gin, we snoozed a lot more in the sun, and I spent literally hours and hours trawling the Sunny Beach strip for the perfect Louis Vuitton Neverfull 'inspired' handbag that was never found (sigh!)
Overall despite some ups and downs I had a lovely week in the sun, I loved the Helena Park Hotel the rooms, the staff, the surroundings and the comfy sun loungers were all amazing. The Sunny Beach strip though struck me as a place that could be hideous in the middle of high season with its vast array of cheap drinks, loud bars, fish spas (random but they had LOADS) and slightly more seedy bars. Don't get me wrong if its an out all night sleep all day kind of thing your after I'm sure its just the thing, But we were there for relaxing and since it was the end of the season things were closing down so it worked for us.
I'd go back in a heart beat, speaking of which, if anyone happens to know Stefan please do pass on my number ;-)
If you've got to this point I commend your stamina. You are my new favourite, xxxxxxxxxxxx
This is one of those moments for me. The thing is I went on and on about going on holiday for so long, I'd feel a bit odd if I didn't actually share the story of what happened when I was away.
.jpg)
This is going to be long, and I took a huge amount of pictures so it might be worthwhile going to get a nice cup of tea (or a wee cocktail) and find somewhere comfy to sit.....
It was Friday the 13th, it was 6.30am, and I was standing outside my house in the freezing cold but I was the happiest girl in the entire world. I was on my way to the first actual 'holiday' holiday in 5 years.
Its really was a case of planes, trains and automobiles that day, 4 hours on the train to Manchester, 3 and a bit hours on the plane to eastern Europe and another half hour on a bus to the hotel.
We went to the Hotel Helena Park in a place called Sunny Beach (yes really) in Bulgaria. We arrived after 11 at night but the hotel had left the dinner buffet open for us, with a champagne reception, as they realised we'd all been travelling for quite some time. But in true Scottish folk abroad style the minute they had secured our All Inclusive wristbands we headed straight for the bar, I mean it was only half an hour until last orders! We we're shocked at how crazy the bar was people really going for it on the dancefloor and free pouring of free drinks. We'd found Nirvana :-)
The grand plan for this trip had been decided months ago, lay next to the pool drinking cocktails all day and have a bit of a giggle at night but nothing too crazy, this was supposed to be a proper forget the world getaway.
The first full day there was all about finding out the lay of the land, or in our case the lay of the sun loungers and to work out which were the best cocktails for poolside sipping. It didn't quite got to plan. The pool at Helena Park is beautiful. Not huge but a big enough and surrounded by plenty of loungers. Being the newbies we thought we'd hit the jackpot by getting the ones closest to the pool bar. We were wrong. As the name of the hotel suggests there is some park features i.e BIG trees, we ended up in the shade for most of the day. As for the grand cocktail sipping plans...well lets just say sugary drinks are like crack to wasps. We soon learnt that snoozing next to the Jacuzzi bit of the pool and bottles of water would be the order for the rest of the week.
I'll not go to much blow by blow of the next couple of days because they mainly consisted of this.....
 |
| I took hundreds of pics that look exactly like this |
Then it was my birthday.
I have said before that this blog is like a little diary for me so what happened this day wasn't exactly picture perfect but I'll talk about it anyway, my friends headed done early to get the good sun loungers sorted, i donned my most flattering bikini and filled up on pancakes from the breakfast buffet. But someone had forgot to inform mother nature of my plans, and it was cloudy ALL day :-( But not to be defeated I went for an afternoon nap and got geared up for my special birthday night out, the friends i was with had used some of their valuable baggage allowance to bring me a couple of presents to open. But i particularly loved the card and badge I got from one of them:
As we were making a night of it we asked the hotel if we could move to the earlier sitting for dinner, which was no problem. But then we arrived at our table and were a little confused that it'd been set up with flowers and a bottle of champagne. My friends new nothing so we went to check but it was definitely for us. the hotel wanted to give me a treat on my birthday, so sweet. And if that wasn't enough, after we'd munched our way through the dinner buffet the waiter brought out a little cake and, despite evidently not knowing much English he even attempted to sing me Happy Birthday, adorable.
After our lovely dinner, things went a little bit south. I was ready for a night out. my friends not so much. Now it could've been the 8 vodkas i'd had but I just walked off and had a bit of a sob next to the pool. Perhaps a little melodramatic, I know, but it was my birthday and I'd blooming well cry if i want to! Seems a bit silly looking back on it now.
Here is a lovely pic of the pool from that night:
On the way back to the hotel we also so a spectacular sight in the pool of the sister hotel (Helena Sands). the pool includes a large, dome structure at one end. Little did we know that for a short time every night it became a giant water feature:
One of the biggest things to to in sunny beach is to go for an evening out at Khans tent, a cabaret show in a big tent shaped building up on a hill above the resort. The show is really good and there is plenty of wine to make it that extra bit exciting ;-)
Here is a random selfie from the evening with the view from the hill. I have no idea why i'm green.
Speaking of my phone, it really was the ideal holiday companion, kept me connected to the interwebs through the hotel WIFI and completely safe to immerse in water, handy for really unflattering shots like this...
If your wondering its a Sony Xperia Z I use it to take all my pics. Best camera I've ever had.
Despite the sounds of it we did attempt sightseeing one day. We went to the local fishing village (read: tourist trap) Nessebar you could see it was a charming place with fishing boats, old church ruins and cobbled streets (and an amazing array of shops selling loads of holiday tat Ooo... I love holiday tat!)
 |
| Yes those are boob mugs and there is holes so you can drink from the nipples Classy! |
As for the rest of the holiday it was all fairly tame. I got a hopeless holiday crush on one of the entertainers, my friends and I ate ridiculous amounts of food, drank a fair amount of gin, we snoozed a lot more in the sun, and I spent literally hours and hours trawling the Sunny Beach strip for the perfect Louis Vuitton Neverfull 'inspired' handbag that was never found (sigh!)
Overall despite some ups and downs I had a lovely week in the sun, I loved the Helena Park Hotel the rooms, the staff, the surroundings and the comfy sun loungers were all amazing. The Sunny Beach strip though struck me as a place that could be hideous in the middle of high season with its vast array of cheap drinks, loud bars, fish spas (random but they had LOADS) and slightly more seedy bars. Don't get me wrong if its an out all night sleep all day kind of thing your after I'm sure its just the thing, But we were there for relaxing and since it was the end of the season things were closing down so it worked for us.
 |
| Removal of the all inclusiveness, sad days :-( |
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