Around Bulgaria in 14 days – preparation

Every year during our summer holidays we go to sea whether it is in Bulgaria or abroad. This year, we decided to take a two-week vacation for the summer, which made us think about what we could do in such a long time. We were unanimous that sitting in one place for 2 weeks would be quite boring. I remembered that our April vacation, which consisted of “5 days – 5 waterfalls”, was quite interesting. And this year I am 30 and wanted to meet the maximum number of goals from the list of things to do before you are 30. So I decided to fulfill a challenge I had set myself, but I didn’t think I would be able to fulfill for a number of reasons, namely a tour of Bulgaria. I should have received the support of my fiancée, but I wasn’t sure if she would wind up on such a journey. When I shared my idea, Eileen took the plunge and accepted my proposal quite cheerfully.

Now was time for the hard part.

The preparation

Taking such a big tour for such a period requires a lot of preparation and planning. For example:

• Preparing a route
• Preparing gear (all-weather clothing, backpacks, equipment, tripods, lenses, etc.)
• Preparing your car for the road
• Breaking the piggybank

Choosing the route

Choosing places to visit and charting the route to take turned out to be a really difficult task. I wanted to finish the tour at the beach, so I was sure we had to start from some southeast landmark. After many long hours of searching, researching online and going through the 4 books, “101 Turns” I was able to create the route. It looked like this:

Because I am relatively organized and I like to make it easy on my way, I also prepared a Google Sheet in which I separated the names of the sights, a link to opoznai.bg just in case, a link with GPS coordinates of the sights and at the end of each day I marked a hotel in which we will stay overnight. Part of the Sheet in question can be seen in the photo.

So that we can not get tired of traveling by car, I built the route so that we have no more than an hour and a half or two to drive each day.

Preparing the travelling gear

We generally like to travel and visit a variety of destinations. But for the long journey we had not prepared before. Before we leave we have to take some things, for example – new hiking boots, hiking pants, jackets, backpacks and more. I open the bracket that we found a lot of cool jackets in Decathlon that fold into small bags and can easily fit in a pocket. I highly recommend them if one has to go on a long road and there is not much space in their backpacks.
Of course, during the excursion we would take a lot of pictures, and I wanted both of us with Eileen to have cameras. So I decided to pamper myself and bought a Nikon D750, which was currently being discounted along with a decent lens that would do the perfect job for me. However, while I was in the store, I decided it would be cool to shoot places with a drone as well. That’s how I got my first drone, DJI Mavic Air. An incident happened during the excursion and I decided that since I started shooting with a drone, I should finish. So later on I got a DJI Mavic 2 Pro. And all that had to be worn, so I got a wonderful LowePro backpack (not in the picture) that was designed to keep the photo technique and have a compartment for a laptop, tablet, clothes, etc. In the picture, things look like this:

If you only knew how heavy all of this is…

So, I know that the tour in the photo is not absolutely complete and misses some of the more interesting places in our country, but I am personally pleased with the result. There is time to tour other destinations as well. And there is much to see in Bulgaria.
In the following articles, I will try to tell about each day of our tour, which was filled with fun events and adventures. So stay tuned.