Bulgaria Ski discussion board

Easier just to paste it on here....

Feb 2007
Have just returned from a week at the hotel victoria in Borovets. The hotel, an austrian chalet type building, is a small 14 roomed hotel, situated about a ten minute walk from the resort centre, in a pine forest. the staff were friendly and helpful. the rooms were very good, basic, but clean with plenty of cupboard space and a fridge filled with drinks and chocolate etc. The rooms were cleaned six days days a week and towels changed 7 days a week, there was always hot running water and the hotel was very warm, so much so, we had to sleep with the window open.

Breakfast was a bit limited, with no choice, we had scrambled/fried eggs seven days running, but on an evening, there was a menu with probably two or three choices. (four courses). typical bulgarian foods, salad, soup with bread, a meat course and a cake. I myself am not a fussy eater, but if you are, then you would probably be best off going self catering. Although we had thought there was a free shuttle service to the resort, on our arrival, this was proved wrong. However, on a morning, there was always a taxi waiting outside to take you down to the resort if you preferred (10 lev- about £3,) and on your return, there are plenty of taxis and horses and carts, which was our preferred way to travel back after a hard day on the slopes. On our departure at 4.30 in the morning, the receptionist kindly gave us all a packed lunch. for the journey, which i have never come across before. The locals were very friendly, if not a bit pushy sometimes, waiting outside their restaurants/bars to coax you in. There were many excellent bars and restaurants in the village, our favourites were the golden horn situated by the button lift at the bottom of the main run, and a fantastic restaurant, on the right hand side as you come into the main street, i think it was called sunny's. (with a large red illuminated pizza sign above the door). where they serve fantastic steaks, pizza and pasta dishes. We ate here on our last evening, as wished we had done so before.

The ski school we attended was fantastic. (samakov). Ivo, our instructor had us on the slopes by 9am every morning, and had finished by about 2.30 - 3pm, giving us time to put what we had learned into practice. I have never skiied in my life, and we were all skiing down the blue runs by the end of the week. A celebratory evening was laid on for us with free drinks at the Samokov hotel on our last evening, where we were presented on stage with our certificates by our instructors, and photos were taken of our group classes.

We were so very lucky with the weather, I think Bulgaria is having a nightmare of a year for snow, however we had about 1.5 foot of snow fall in the first three days we were there, which made conditions ideal. Plenty of off piste boarding for my partner, who was a bit dubious about holidaying in Bulgaria, but was very pleasantly surprised. I would definately go to this resort /hotel again, but would probably book last minute next time, to save myself all the weeks of anxiety, as to whether it would snow or not....
An excellent first time ski holiday.