Bulgaria Ski discussion board

Before I put my honest review on here Please Please Please don't compare Borovets to any other European countries.

Starting with the Hotel Yanakiev: which is where I stayed with my daughter age 15, my boyfriend and his son age 11. This hotel is a lovely little place to stay, very clean and spacious, with 34 bedrooms and 6 apartments (we had an apartment) so peaceful at night. modern facilities with free swimming pool spa facilities (payable) and ski in ski out location right on the Rotata Green run (this hotel can be booked through Inghams or Sk direct). Food was ok with about 4 different dishes to choose from at Dinner. We weren't on a low budget so decided to eat out everynight apart from 1 night. If you are on a low budget and decide to stick with the food then you won't go hungry; your just a bit limited with choice.

Ski hire/lift pass hire/lessons etc: Having travelled with Inghams last year to Andorra we were given all the lift passes, equipment hire and lessons on the coach so all we had to do was go and sort ourselves out after checking into our hotel; sadley this was not the case in Borovets, we had to go to the Samakov hotel the day after we arrived and then wait there for the Inghams rep to turn up to hand out all the passes only to then have to go down the ski depot to collect our equipment which we had hired. There are several ski depots and the one we had to use was located at the Gondola. The quality of the skis and boots were poor and I was given the wrong size skis, the assistants in the ski depot spoke very limited English and so couldn't understand what we were saying to them; they also seemed pretty disinterested. Both me and my boyfriend decided to go elsewhere to change our skis and boots and hired them from the Hotel Yanakiev at a cost of 100 Lev (approx £50.00 for 6 days). This made such a difference and money well spent as the equipment was of a much higher standard. This is not a dig at Boro Sports; more of a dig at Inghams for being so un-organised and not checking the quality of the hire equipment at the ski depot. This is especially important for complete beginners who may not know what size skis and boots to choose. It was literally a case of them giving you a pair of boots and skis and you just cracking on with it yourself.


Borovets bars/restaurants etc: The people are so lovely and kind and I ony hope that this resort receives the large cash injection that it deserves to give it a make over. I love the rustic feel to the place, the open fireplaces in the bars and restaurants although the tattyness in the streets lets its down which is a real shame as like I said the local people are so lovley.

A few nice places to visit for food:
Salt & Pepper
The White Horse
The Derby Bar
Karma ( try the suckling pig and garlic potatoes, mm lovley)
Mamma Mia steak house


The slopes and ski instruction: Plenty of variety to choose from and the scenery is breathtaking. Not all the slopes were open due to the snow conditions although due to the fact that we had an excellent ski instructor called Georgi, who not only was very patient he had a great sense of humor and our group had a right laugh with him. I have learnt more in this recent trip to Borovets than I have elsewhere. The Markudjik 1 is a really nice blue slope and if you are lucky enough to get the opportunity to go down the Musala Pathway then do it as you won't regret it, its sooooo nice and you can just cruise down all the way back to the resort.

The queue for the gondola starts around 9.15 so either get there before this time or leave it til about 12.00 and up the mountain for the afternoon other wise the wait in the queue is around an hour.

In summary: Borovets has a lot to offer, with a nice selection of runs and friendly local people; would I go back there again? I wouldn't rule it out although its not in my plans for the next couple of years. If I do come back then I would like to see the streets tidied up wth the strip bars being a little bit more discreet (I'm think of families with small children here) and would definatly stay back at the Yanakiev hotel as that place rocks!

Hi Alan

My reason for not to compare it wasn't negative so sincere apologies for this. I don't want people to compare simply because its not fair on the Bulgarian's, they are lovely friendly people who are trying to accomodate a good skiing experience with limited resources. I cannot vouch enough for our Borosports ski instructor Georgi Rangelov - excellent tution, the best I've ever had and I was well chuffed that I learnt to do my stem turns. Anyone who has Georgi as their instructor is in for not only great tuition but a right good laugh. The more I think about Borovets the more I want to go back! Although there are soooooo many places I still want to ski in so Borovets will need to go on the back burner for a while.

Take care

Jo )