Now that I’m caught up on posts from our Asia leg, I’m eager to share about where Chad and I are currently, Bansko, Bulgaria. We’ve been here for almost three weeks now, but I’m going to focus this post on our first two weeks and two days.

This one-month stay was a long time coming. Our first month in Bansko was planned for August 2020, but it couldn’t happen due to COVID and the border closures. We rescheduled again for August 2023 and August 2024, but my mom’s cancer treatment and subsequent health decline prevented those trips. Definitely the right decision to cancel in all three cases, but we started to worry Bansko was cursed. 

This year we were able to depart on our travels in late July as planned and Bulgaria was our first stop. I’ll write about our wonderful four days in Sofia in my next post. For now, here’s a glimpse of our life in Bankso. 

Value Lodging

Bansko is very popular with people who do what we do (often called digital nomads) because it is built up for winter skiing, but much emptier the rest of the year, which means lots of low-cost vacation rentals. We’ve learned since arriving that it is also very popular with families. There are tons of families here with kids of all ages enjoying their long summer vacation, mostly from Bulgaria and other European countries. 

The lodging we found for this trip is definitely a great value at just $593 for the whole month of August. We’ll also need to pay a lodging tax of about $35 and the electricity, which the host estimates at about $55. Still, that comes out to just $22 a night for a really nice one-bedroom apartment with a great mountain view. It’s not quite as cheap as our original Bansko accommodation in 2020, which we’d reserved for just $16.50 per night, but that place has actually doubled in price since 2020, so would have been more. This is one of the best-value Airbnbs we’ve had. We’re finding food prices at the grocery store and restaurants to also be quite reasonable.  

The apartment has worked out really well for us, with Chad’s workspace at the dining room table and me working in the bedroom. There’s great natural light, enough counter space to make cooking pleasant, and even a dishwasher! We also really like the location at the base of the mountains, about a block from the ski slope we walk up to reach most of the best trails. And of course, the balcony, where I eat my breakfast with a mountain view every morning.

Hiking, Walking, and More Hiking

The big attraction of Bankso in the summer, certainly to us, is hiking in the mountains around the city, which are part of Pirin National Park. We set a goal to hike and walk 350 miles during this four month leg, which averages out to a little over 3 miles per day. So far in our first 2.5 weeks in Bankso, we’re averaging over 5 miles a day, though that includes a mix of shorter and longer walks and hikes.

Many of our walks are just around town. It’s about a mile from our apartment to the big supermarket Billa, which we need to visit at least once a week, and a little over a mile to the main square and city park. Luckily, our walk to the square is along a really adorable pedestrian street that has become one of our favorite parts of Bansko. We even enjoyed a picnic on a bench there on an overcast day. The weather has been lovely, in the mid-70s to low-80s Fahrenheit most days (24-27 degrees Celsius), so we’re finding lots of opportunities to hike and walk.

Cute Downtown and Cultural Events

Bansko is very charming and though the permanent population is just 8,800 residents, it is home to triple that amount of tourists in the winter (according to some estimates) and probably double in the summer. So it has far more restaurants, bars, and cultural activities than you’d expect in a town that small. There are literally dozens of very traditional Bulgarian restaurants with nearly identical menus scattered throughout the town, many right next door to each other. In contrast, my hometown of 4,400 has about 6 restaurants (10 if you count fast food). In addition to all the Bulgarian places, Bansko has a few other cuisines you’d expect to find: Greek, Italian/pizza, sushi (which I don’t think we’ll try), and lots of fast food burgers and doner kabobs.

Our arrival also coincided with the 28th annual Bansko Jazz Festival, which brought in acts from around the world for performances on two stages – one in the main square and one in the park. The festival ran from August 1 to 10 and we made it out to enjoy the music at least four or five times. Chad has gotten really into jazz in recent years, so loved it, and good jazz always makes me fondly remember the jazz aficionados in my family, especially my late Uncle Al, who was an excellent jazz drummer and teacher.

This past weekend brought a small Balkan music festival to Bansko, and we made it out to hear one of the performers following an early pizza dinner. We were expecting traditional music but it was much more Eurovision-style pop. Still, it was fun to be out with all the people and the music was quite interesting. By the final songs, people were dancing in a big circle in front of the stage like you see at Greek weddings (not us, we just sat on a ledge and watched).

Anniversary and Other Fun

Our 23rd wedding anniversary was two days after our arrival, so we devoted a full day to celebrating. Started with a five mile hike in the mountains, then went out for brunch at a restaurant called Skabrin RestoBar followed by gelato in the square, then picked up a bunch of stuff to make a tasty appetizer dinner to enjoy on our balcony before going up to the jazz fest. It was a really fun way to spend our anniversary and fully immerse ourselves in life in Bansko.

We enjoyed Skabrin so much that we returned for brunch the following Sunday. We’ve also had a few other fun meals out and in on our balcony.

Summary

We had a lot of anticipation for our month in Bansko, which was more than five years in the making. It is definitely living up to our very high expectations! And proving to be the great value we always expected.