Southern Bulgaria Travel Guide

Don't miss the small local restaurants with live music! Stay at a small old house, better than a hotel if you want to feel the real spirit of the country... Great for a snow Christmas! And if you like skiing, has that too!

Skiing, and all associated winter sports are practiced around Bansko from December until April, with the best snow in February and March. Bansko is only operating at a small capacity of its ever expanding rows and rows of unrented apartments. The queue's for the Gondola's are usually quite extreme. The Gondola service staff are quite slow and give a general impression of dislike towards all non nationals. A newly opened cable-car lift conveys you to Mt.Todorka for breathtaking panoramas and on Sunday mornings in the center of Bansko there is an open-air market that is well worth visiting.

Not a bad place for a day (but no more). The bus station is slightly out of town but you can walk it if you don't have heavy luggage. The centre is clean and lively and there is a river cutiing the town in two: on the other side of the centre, a nice complex with a church and some traditional houses. Near the centre is the American University, which dominates the town, though as a tourist you won't have much to do with it. If you have a car, this is where to break the trip between Thessaloniki and Sofia.