BANSCO

Bandit, I had forgotten about the Lev and all it entailed You made me smile just thinking about it !! Thank you

Jan

Hi all,

I went to Bansko in early 2007 so here are my thoughts.

First of all Bulgaria wasn't my choice but a group of friends were going for the first time and they wanted it as cheap as possible.
I has my doubts as I had only skied in France before that trip (Les Menuires, Courchevaal & Flaine).

I'll start with the bad
A lot of the lifts were closed for many of the days due to bad weather or the fact the runs hadn't been bashed.
The weather wasn't that bad other than one of the days but they seemed quick to close.
This meant there were large queues on the ones that did open and the staff didn't try to fill the empty spaces on the lifts to speed it up and clear the queue.
Once on the lifts I found them to be fine.

On the third day, the main gondola closed late morning which meant that there was no way to get up the mountain (in a lift/car anyway) which meant my wife was stuck down in town for the day after visiting a friend in hospital earlier on (accident first day on run back to gondola).
When it came to the end of the day a friend and I came back to the upper station to find that they were laying on mini-buses but they wanted us to pay around £10 or so for them!!
I was quite disgusted with this so we decided to ski down the long run home to the home station which meant skiing on the very difficult run due to the lower part having bad snow and black ice everywhere.
This is where my other friend hit his head on the first day and had such bad concussion that he spent 2.5 days in hospital.

The hopsital was unlike anything I had seen before and looked like something out of Hostel (film).
One of the nurses called her daughter who spoke English and she came down to translate which was a godsend.
She told us that they would look after him well regardless of how the hopital looked. (dried blood up walls!)
i would implore anyone who travels to Bulgaria to take a phrase book otherwise you could struggle.

We also had the last day cancelled due to a terrorist alert where there were apparently devices hidden on the mountain.
We tried to get some in on the morning of our leaving day but it was closed for the same reason.
I ended up having 4.5 days skiing which was more than some and less than others!

We went to a Bulgarian restaurant on the last day and it was an eye opener.
There was a platter of meat delivered which looked dodgy enough for me to leave it almost untouched.
If you look into more than I did you'll probably find some good food there but we just went into a random place.

The Good.The runs although not many in number were pretty good and the ones higher up the mountain (when you could get there) were enjoyable.

At night there were a few good places to go.
Sir Galahaad or Lord Galahad. This is a lively place where we had loads of fun for a few of the nights. They also do an amazing steak so if you do go i'd highly reccoment this and the bar.
There was also another bar that i can't remember the name of but its a Karaoke bar which is down some steps. We went in there and it was fairly empty but once we got in there and on the mike the place filled up and was kicking.
I'd like to think it was our voices but maybe it just gets busy anyway.
I don't think I'd ever sung so much... I loved it!!

There's also the Happy End which we left until the last night (even though I nagged them to go in several times).
They do live music in there and we had a fantastic night in there also.

The hotel was good and the staff were really friendly, especially the woman who kept the beer coming when we were in the outside hot tub.
At one point we were all in the hot tub with snowing falling on us.
Sweet pictures there.


All in all I'd say if you haven't much experience of ski resorts then this place could be fine for you.
Good nightlife, some good food (hotel was ok too).
Skiing was also fairly good but hopefully it will get better if they can open more lifts and get the queues moving quicker.

I wouldn't rule out going back for a cheaper holiday but I've now discovered Austria and although dearer, I love it!!

Jeez I've goen on a bit here.
I've even worked past my time, I should've left 10 minutes ago.
its the weekend!! What am I waiting for? I'm outta here...............

Remember
Go Hard or Go Home.
Ski4Life

Narcis resort Bansko are you a owner can you get in touch with the view of forming a owners group.

Hello, I need recomendations for a nice 4/5 stars hotel in Bansko. There are a lot of hotels in the resort, all looks good. Please, if somebody has experience to inform me. I will highly appreciate this. We are planning ski vacation in Bansko after 2 weeks and i have to book a hotel. Thank you in advance

We stayed at one of the apartments at Hotel Katarino - it is a couple of miles out of town but we had a hire car so that didn't present a problem to us (in fact we quite liked being a bit out of it). I think the hotel also runs a shuttle to the gondola station.

The apartment was UK owned but gave you full use of teh hotel leisure facilities, both apartment and facilities were good. regretably otherwise I didn't really rate the ski area or experience.

http://www.bansko-holiday.co.uk/home.html

Rustyinn

A friend of mine goes to Bansko every year and loves it but I just don't get it myself. I'm no snob but I personally wouldn't risk going anywhere like that when there's so much choice in established ski areas. If it was less than half the price of France or Italy then I'd take a look but as far as I can see the savings are negligible and I'm afraid that the adage of 'you get what you pay for' would haunt me. Cue price quotes from fervent Banskollians!

I have a house in Borovets and its got mostly new lifts now, and they have speed lifts also and the queues are not an issue since 3 years ago when all the new ones went in.
I love borovets its friendly and calm, great prices and great company with snow canons on 5 slopes now so even when its not great you can still snowboard.
Lift pass on Sat & Sunday is £15 per day for all 58k of slopes... If thats not making me happy nothing does.

welsh boarder wrote:I have a house in Borovets and its got mostly new lifts now, and they have speed lifts also and the queues are not an issue since 3 years ago when all the new ones went in.
I love borovets its friendly and calm, great prices and great company with snow canons on 5 slopes now so even when its not great you can still snowboard.
Lift pass on Sat & Sunday is £15 per day for all 58k of slopes... If thats not making me happy nothing does.

I just worry when my Bulgarian (born and bred) friends always ski in Switzerland and Italy and avoid skiing in Bulgaria at all costs because of 'all the crooks and scamers that invade every aspect of Bulgarian life'.

Nuff said

Rustyinn