My name is Marion Vermazen. I am a traveler, hiker, reader, Sun alumnus, computer geek, YouTuber, Spanish and French language student, knitter, weaver and genealogist.
To make it easier for you to follow our 2026 Spring European trip from the beginning I’ve linked the blog posts in order.
You can go to the first blog post of our trip by clicking on this link.
At the end of each blog post after that, there is a link to the next day’s blog post.
Tomorrow we leave Bulgaria and fly to Spain so tonight we wanted to stay not too far from the Sofia airport. Today turned out to be a pretty nice day weather wise. There hasn’t been any rain and we even saw some patches of sunshine.
We had a great breakfast at Bey House. Before we left Veliko Tarnovo we went to the post office so I could mail some birthday cards.
Tonight we are at the Hyatt Regency Pravets Resort. It’s a beautiful resort on the lake. And the Hotel Director of Operations personally welcomed us when we checked in. We took a two mile walk around the lake and then had dinner in the hotel bar.
I could certainly see staying here again. They seem to have some interesting sites nearby and the large indoor pool overlooking the lake looks inviting.
In spite of the rain we were determined to go out exploring in Veliko Tarnovo on Monday. We started at the history museum just 2 minutes up the road from our hotel.
I decided that I wasn’t dressed warmly enough. But when we went back to the hotel they were making up our room so we went across the street and had coffee and lemonade.
Next we went to the fortress. It an interesting and beautiful place to explore.
When we got back to the hotel we made an appointment to use the Turkish Bath.
We had a wonderful dinner to end our day.
It rained all day today. Luckily our rooms in both Carpe Diem where we stayed the last two nights and the Bey House Royal Hotel in Veliko Tarnovo where we are tonight are big and very welcoming. So we were happy staying in our room, reading and enjoying the ambiance.
Today we drove just over three hours west towards Sofia. We stayed in Veliko Tarnovo the last time we came to Bulgaria too. Wikipedia describes it as the historical and spiritual capital of Bulgaria. The center of the old town has the castle complex where the Bulgarian Emperors lived. Tomorrow we will explore it rain or shine.
If you would like to see our blog post about us exploring Veliko Tarnovo you can click here.
Carpe Diem where we are staying is an absolutely wonderful retreat deep in the Bulgarian countryside. We have had great food and our room is very comfortable.
Today after it stopped raining we went for a walk into the tiny village of Sladka Voda.
Then we used the spa. The hot tub, spa and saunas are all heated by wood stoves.
As I said the food has all been great. Dinner tonight was even better than last night.
If you would like to continue to follow our travels, you can click here to read our next blog post.
We spent 4 nights in Burgas. The Primoretz Grand Hotel and the town of Burgas are really nice. That’s all it takes to enjoy a place. I really liked Burgas. Of course it helped that we had two days of sunshine. Today is grey again but today is a travel day.
Before leaving Burgas this morning we used the spa. It was lovely.
Just before noon we checked out and drove about an hour and a half north and inland to a hotel spa outside of Sladka Voda. Duke booked Carpe Diem because it has excellent reviews. I think it was an excellent choice. It is a wonderful hotel and spa. Even though the weather is back to rainy, cold and grey we had a wonderful relaxing afternoon.
We checked out the spa which we will use tomorrow and relaxed and read this afternoon.
We had an excellent dinner in the hotel restaurant.
To read about our second day at Carpe Diem click here.
Marion's Blog 