Hotel Selena, Bulgaria

A wonderful place to stop when on a Black Sea vacation is Hotel Selena (Yani Popov str. 7, Sozopol 8130, Bulgaria; phone/fax +359 550 25200 or phone +359 550 25300). This lovely, 72-room hotel is located on the shore of a horseshoe-shaped bay. Odd-numbered rooms overlook the beach and harbor.

My wife, Sandy, and I stayed there June 1-9, 2012. For €30 (near $38) per night, we had a very comfortable, clean room.

This area is a very popular holiday destination for Germans, Russians and the Bulgarians, themselves. All the hotels become fully booked in the summertime, but we were there before the big rush, so we could enjoy the area.

The hotel’s restaurant was quite good. Prices were super-low — $4.60 for a main dish. Four of us had dinner with wine and beer for under $50. I especially liked the huge salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh from the vine, and goat cheese ($3). There also were lots of inexpensive places to eat nearby.

During our stay, Duo Mirage, a pair of very fine singers/musicians named Dani and Rumen, performed Bulgarian and American songs nightly in the hotel’s open-air restaurant.

While there, I read Alan Furst’s “Night Soldiers,” about Bulgaria and the underground resistance in the 1940s. We visited Vidin and other locations mentioned in the book.

The book depicted the “old Bulgaria”; the new Bulgaria on the Black Sea is a haven of super-nice condos for sale at prices as low as €21,000 ($16,800) though more typically €55,000-€75,000.

I recommend this hotel. To get there, we flew into Bulgaria’s Burgas Airport and transferred to Sozopol via a prearranged cab.

JIM DELMONTE
Honolulu, HI