Around Black Sea: Romania Bulgaria Odessa

About Tour

This tour is part of a more long and complex tour around Black Sea. This long tour consist of 3 tours:

  • Odessa - Danube Delta - Romanian black sea coast - Bulgarian Black Sea coast;
  • Turkey Black Sea coast - Georgia Black Sea coast;
  • Abhazia - Soci - Russian Black Sea coast - over the new bridge to Crimeea, and tour of Crimeea.

This yours will have fix date departures, for the next 3 years so anybody can jump in any of these tours every year, and in 3 years one can say I really did the complete tour of Black Sea coast. This tour starts in Odessa, a fantastic city, in Ukraine, drive along the south Ukrainian Black Sea coast, till Romania, where you will enjoy Danube Delta, see how Danube comes into the sea, see the ancient Greek history at Black Sea, and finally enter in Bulgaria and drive to the along the Bulgarian black sea coast, and see Queen Maria’s palace in Balcik, see the greek and roman history at Black Sea, overnight in the beautiful ancient city of Nessebar, visit Burgas, Varna and Sozopol. You will see ancient greek and roman sites (at Histria, Varna, Mangalia, Tomis etc), the medieval city of Nessebar and the beauty of the wild nature in Danube Delta and not only. You will enjoy the wines made in this region, wines which are exceptionally good because of the climate, hot days in summer and cold breeze from the sea during the night.

 

1 st Day

Arrival in Burgas

Included highlights:

  • Arrival in Burgas. Burgas is the second largest city on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and the fourth-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia, Plovdiv, and Varna. The Burgas port is the largest cargo port in the country. The airport which serves international flights is situated at a distance of 10 km north-east from the city.  
  • Short city tour of Burgas for those who are coming earlier. The cathedral church “St. Cyril and St. Methodius” is also one of the most often visited sites in the city. 
  • Wellcome drinks and dinner in the Hotel.
  • Accommodation in a 4* Hotel.  

Included meals:
  • Dinner

What People Say

More reviews ›

Natalia is an excellent guide, full of interesting information about the places we went, recommended a very good hotel, a good van and driver. She is everything else you want/expect from a tour guide, and she was also a hard-working, intelligent and caring member of our team. Without her skills, flexibility and perseverance, our trip would not have been as successful as it was. She really cares about her clients, and has the willingness and ability to make whatever needs to happen, happen. She was great!

I am very glad and thankful with the cooperation that we have had during these 3 years. All our tourists – groups and individuals – were satisfied with your work. One of the main things that I appreciate in you is the following: it does not matter what category clients are – tourists, VIP, government delegations or even international organizations (as OSCE) – you can find the best words, the best way, the best “direction” to each of them to make them interested in given information. 

In each review which we had from our clients there were words of thankfulness to your services. Some of our partners even in advance ask us to choose you as a guide for their groups. Thank you for your professionalism and waiting for the future cooperation!

Have you ever wanted to go on a culture-wine-food tour? In California? France? Italy? Please, have some imagination! Be a little adventurous and go on one in Romania and Moldova. 

It was my good luck to participate in a tour organized by Ways Travel, during which i checked out the many wonders of Romania and Moldova. 

Our group on the bus was an international gang of nine – a Belgian, a German, a Norwegian, an Australian, a few Americans of interesting ethnic alloys and me, dual Dutch and American citizen. What can I say, it was an experience just sitting on a bus with these people and hear their war stories and get initiated into the workings of the behind-the-scenes travel industry. 

Leader of our tribe was the fabulous tour guide Victoria, who speaks four languages, English, German, Russian, Romanian, one of those people who makes a simple bilingual person such as myself feel humble and uneducated. 

The trip was a symphony of history, food, drink, music and dance. Dancing with the Gypsies no less. I tell you, it was fabulous, it was intoxicating. We got history – a dizzying whirl of wars and battles and bloody strife. Of conquests and annexations, of armies rampaging through the countryside, raping, pillaging and impaling. We heard colorful tales about Dacian tribes, the Roman Empire, the Red Horde, the Saxons, the Ottoman Empire, the communist era under Ceausescu. And let’s not forget to mention good old Count Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, who hailed from Transylvania. Really, we deserved every drop of hootch we got along the way to recover from all the tragedies we vicariously suffered through. 

In Romania we loved the beautiful towns of Sibiu and Sighisoara. In Sighisoara we missed seeing the house where Dracula was born because a movie was being filmed and they’d closed it off for visitors. Fortunately, we had a liqueur and brandy tasting to cheer us up. We hadn’t had lunch yet and our stomachs were empty, which helped raise the mood quickly. 

A highlight was our visit to the home of a Roma family in Transylvania and learning more about their culture and lifestyle. (You can read a story about this on my blog here.) Not all Gypsies are beggars living in the streets of large cities. It’s always a good thing to be disabused of your prejudices and preconceived notions. 

We stayed in excellent hotels and lodges, as well as in a humble hostel run by a monastery. We ate fancy restaurant food as well as simple village fare. We saw exquisite as well as cheery architecture, visited opulent cathedrals as well as the modest underground monastery chapel in Orhei Vechi, not far from Chisinau. The vino flowing across the miles was a charming mix of the good, the bad and the holy. The holy being the wine we tasted in a monastery, blessed by the priests. Unfortunately, the blessing did not transform it into nectar of the gods, but the dinner there was quite gourmet, all prepared from food grown by the monks without chemical assistance. 

We also visited Transnistria, which is a rather unique place, as most of you will already know. It is also home to the famous Kvint brandy factory and would you believe, we went there for a brandy dégustation – seven varieties of brandy. It was very informative, interesting and intoxicating. It was also lunch time, but fortunately there was food. We eventually struggled out of there, back on the bus, across the border that is not a border, and traveled down to the Purcari wineries in the south of Moldova where we were treated to . . . you guessed it . . . a wine tasting. Of ten types of wine. Not just any old village plonk, either. No, we got to sip the wine of kings, queens and tsars. Our livers got a workout that day. 

I’m going to stop here. There was more, much more, but I don’t want to give away everything, because what you should do, really, is check out Ways Travel’s website at www.ways.md .