One of my goals for our Balkans Adventure was to get to the Black Sea and today was the day we headed for a town called Varna a largish coastal town and apparently a Bulgarian sea side resort. Because we are running out of time on this trip the exercise was symbolic rather than substantive as we only planned to stay there long enough to touch the sea and then move on, but, it seems to me a lot of travel is symbolic.

We left Cliff's establishment, Trinity Rocks Farm, pretty early (too early for Cliff to be awake) and for much of the morning we drove in fog of varying thicknesses. But eventually the sun appeared and made for a good driving day.

On the western edge of Varna we came across a large shopping Mall and decided to stop and do some shopping. The parking attendant/security guard initially seemed a bit disconcerted as we wheeled our big yellow beast into his tiny parking lot but eventually gathered his composure and helped us park.

With our shopping done we continued on into downtown Varna with the roads getting narrower, the trees lower and the locals more impatient with our slow travel. The downtown area is a bit 'old-soviet' in nature lots of old apartment buildings and other soviet style buildings, generally a bit run down.

There was no access to the beach for a vehicle our size in the downtown area so we continued north along the main coastal road. Still no access to the beach as all the beachside real estate is occupied by private houses.

We traveled some miles north of Varna in this fashion looking for a way down to the beach and generally beginning to give up hope when unexpectedly we came upon a sign to Laguna Camping and found a small rustic camping ground just off the road towards the sea. To our delight the place had its own small beach and so we had electricty, hot showers (in an unheated building) and a chance to put a finger in the Black Sea (too cold for a swim). So we considered todays bit of symbolism complete.