A Teacher’s Trip to the wonderful city of Albena

Hello All.  So I went on my first teacher’s trip with my school last weekend and we wend to a lovely beach resort town called Albena.  Albena is about 35 km from Varna, the largest of the beach cities in Bulgaria.  Now what makes Albena interesting is that, it’s not really a town.  I know that may seem strange, but Albena is literally a resort town, with hotels and all-inclusive vacations.  The people who live there are the people who own the hotels and shops and most of the people who work there are college students or people from other towns who come there to work for the summer and make a lot of money in the process.  In Bulgaria, the beach is where you want to be from the middle of May until the middle of September.  There is a whole industry set up for this influx of tourists.
So my trip to Albena was interesting and fun.  A bus full of teachers left at about 9am from my little town.  A few hours later, I’m not sure about the time, I have to sleep on buses or else I would get horribly car sick, we stopped at the Stone Forest in Varna.  This was a beautiful place with all these different limestone formations.  It was so beautiful to just walk around, and get lost in your own thoughts in.  I do wish though that I had known we were going there, because the sand was so hot!  I was wearing flip-flops and it just hurt my feet.  We then left the stone forest and made it to Albena at about 2pm.  Our trip to Albena was an “all-inclusive.”  This ment that everything from our food, to our pool time, our beach chairs, and our drinks (if domestic) was included.  The hotel was beautiful, and the pool was nice, but I don’t know how to swim and there really wasn’t a shallow end at the pool.  The beach was lovely, glistening water, not too hot sand, a wonderful array of shops at the boardwalk.  I couldn’t have asked for more.  The staff that worked at the hotel we were at were so nice, and charming.  All in all I wish I could have stayed longer, but alas, this was a weekend trip.  The trip ended with a short detour to Varna for shopping, and then back to reality and 2 more school weeks.  I hope I get the chance to go the beach again soon.