sombro
02-08-2007, 10:52 AM
Ok so lets hear about the worst place you've been on holiday.
I'll kick off with......
Bulgaria
We booked two weeks in Bulgaria on an allocation on arrival basis at a resort on the Black Sea. Yes it was cheap.
It started badly with the flight, Heemus Airlines are not well known and rightly so. On the steps to get on the plane it was obvious that it was in a bad way, it seemed like almost every single panel outside the plane had shifted by a few degrees and rusted. On take off the left-hand side luggage compartment was juddering violently and water was leaking from the air conditioning in several places. Everybody was crapping themselves but the stewardesses didn't seem at all bothered, they just closed the curtains between chicken and rooster class and STARTED SMOKING!!! This was a nonsmoking flight of nearly 5 hours duration years after smoking was banned on all flights.
Amazingly we landed without further incident and were kamikazi bussed to our hotel. It looked like we were in a devolping bit of the resort but we soon came to realise that impression was because everything in Bulgaria has been designed, built and maintained by utter fuckwits.
The room furniture was all made from melamime faced chipboard and secured with woodscrews, including the beds, we had a twin room and romantic plans were instantly scuppered by the fact that my bed collapsed the second I tried to move it closer to hers. The door onto the balcony gave some concern, the lock looked like it had been forced open hundreds of times. When it was fully locked I could push it open from outside with one finger. Mrs Sombro started crying.
The resort, aah what can I say. It wasn't in any of the brochures. There was one road that stopped about half a mile from the beach but the rest was dirt tracks flanked by swarthy types at pasting tables laden with (i kid you not) replica guns, machete knives and throwing stars. Everything was of a very low quality.The only food available was barbeque and salad.In a restaurant I ordered half a roast chicken and chips, half was cooked half was still frozen, I mentioned this to the waitress and was told that it was done like that because they have a lot of russian visitors and they like it that way! Avoid russian food is the message here (or waitresses who bullshit). We were obviously in a resort modeled on stes from the film apocalypse now.
Everywhere we went we saw stuff being done in the worst way, one morning walking along knife alley down to the beach we stopped to watch the owner of a bar put up some new lights, he was wearing loafers two sizes too big for him and standing on a chair that had three legs while he screwed in the lights. On our walk back from the beach he was to be seen rolling around the floor in agony. The front face of the hotel was heavily pebble-dashed and the weight was causing the chimney to come away from the building, three blokes looked at it for a couple of days and then decided another layer of pebble-dashing would sort it.
It was so bad it was quite funny as every hour the bar of crapness was raised another notch, you could hear british people incredulous at the sights from their balconies, there was a swimming pool being built for the hotel opposite, by one man mixing the cement in a wheelbarrow. The guy turned up to get the empties from the bar in a flat bed minivan and after honking at a tourist did the fastest three point turn in history, it was an impressive sight as about forty full crates of empties went flying out the back to smash on the carpark.
After a couple of days of this we gave our rep a bit of a bollocking and she moved us to a proper resort for the second week. The resort was called Sunny Beach or something contrived like that. It was hot as hell and we arrived at the new hotel to find that the water wasn't working and wouldn't be for another six hours. At least the resort seemed ok. We had a bit of a look around and a hangover from communism is that there is almost full employment, although some of those jobs are to show people how to put money into a pool table or just to sit by the door of a toilet. We soon noticed that every business had someone sitting, just far enough away to be inconspicuous, watching what was going on.It soon became apparent that the whole place was run by the mafia.
We heard all sorts of stories, the best advice was to keep your head down because all the businesses if not connected were protected. We bought shedloads of dodgy cds and sportswear and would have had quite a good time if it were not for the swarm of big black beetles that invade that part of the coast every summer. They made it unpleasant to eat out or have your window open at night. They were not so keen on the beach though so for most of that week we drank on the beach while russian lads punched each others faces in to the hip-hop coming from nearby bars.
good times :)
I'll kick off with......
Bulgaria
We booked two weeks in Bulgaria on an allocation on arrival basis at a resort on the Black Sea. Yes it was cheap.
It started badly with the flight, Heemus Airlines are not well known and rightly so. On the steps to get on the plane it was obvious that it was in a bad way, it seemed like almost every single panel outside the plane had shifted by a few degrees and rusted. On take off the left-hand side luggage compartment was juddering violently and water was leaking from the air conditioning in several places. Everybody was crapping themselves but the stewardesses didn't seem at all bothered, they just closed the curtains between chicken and rooster class and STARTED SMOKING!!! This was a nonsmoking flight of nearly 5 hours duration years after smoking was banned on all flights.
Amazingly we landed without further incident and were kamikazi bussed to our hotel. It looked like we were in a devolping bit of the resort but we soon came to realise that impression was because everything in Bulgaria has been designed, built and maintained by utter fuckwits.
The room furniture was all made from melamime faced chipboard and secured with woodscrews, including the beds, we had a twin room and romantic plans were instantly scuppered by the fact that my bed collapsed the second I tried to move it closer to hers. The door onto the balcony gave some concern, the lock looked like it had been forced open hundreds of times. When it was fully locked I could push it open from outside with one finger. Mrs Sombro started crying.
The resort, aah what can I say. It wasn't in any of the brochures. There was one road that stopped about half a mile from the beach but the rest was dirt tracks flanked by swarthy types at pasting tables laden with (i kid you not) replica guns, machete knives and throwing stars. Everything was of a very low quality.The only food available was barbeque and salad.In a restaurant I ordered half a roast chicken and chips, half was cooked half was still frozen, I mentioned this to the waitress and was told that it was done like that because they have a lot of russian visitors and they like it that way! Avoid russian food is the message here (or waitresses who bullshit). We were obviously in a resort modeled on stes from the film apocalypse now.
Everywhere we went we saw stuff being done in the worst way, one morning walking along knife alley down to the beach we stopped to watch the owner of a bar put up some new lights, he was wearing loafers two sizes too big for him and standing on a chair that had three legs while he screwed in the lights. On our walk back from the beach he was to be seen rolling around the floor in agony. The front face of the hotel was heavily pebble-dashed and the weight was causing the chimney to come away from the building, three blokes looked at it for a couple of days and then decided another layer of pebble-dashing would sort it.
It was so bad it was quite funny as every hour the bar of crapness was raised another notch, you could hear british people incredulous at the sights from their balconies, there was a swimming pool being built for the hotel opposite, by one man mixing the cement in a wheelbarrow. The guy turned up to get the empties from the bar in a flat bed minivan and after honking at a tourist did the fastest three point turn in history, it was an impressive sight as about forty full crates of empties went flying out the back to smash on the carpark.
After a couple of days of this we gave our rep a bit of a bollocking and she moved us to a proper resort for the second week. The resort was called Sunny Beach or something contrived like that. It was hot as hell and we arrived at the new hotel to find that the water wasn't working and wouldn't be for another six hours. At least the resort seemed ok. We had a bit of a look around and a hangover from communism is that there is almost full employment, although some of those jobs are to show people how to put money into a pool table or just to sit by the door of a toilet. We soon noticed that every business had someone sitting, just far enough away to be inconspicuous, watching what was going on.It soon became apparent that the whole place was run by the mafia.
We heard all sorts of stories, the best advice was to keep your head down because all the businesses if not connected were protected. We bought shedloads of dodgy cds and sportswear and would have had quite a good time if it were not for the swarm of big black beetles that invade that part of the coast every summer. They made it unpleasant to eat out or have your window open at night. They were not so keen on the beach though so for most of that week we drank on the beach while russian lads punched each others faces in to the hip-hop coming from nearby bars.
good times :)