In Romania, the holiday of Rusalii (English: Pentecost) is considered important enough of a holiday to give everyone the day off from work.

I don’t actually know anyone who goes to church here (despite a whopping 92% of the population considering themselves to be Christian), so I don’t know what Rusalii means for Romanians. I have a vague understanding of what Pentecost means for American Christians, so I’m going to imagine it’s probably the same. Perhaps someone can enlighten me in the comments?

So what did we do for the holiday? What everyone else did, of course. We went to the beach 🙂

The gorgeous Black Sea in Golden Sands, Bulgaria

It was a super last minute trip, but we were invited by friends and I was really happy to go. I was searching Thursday afternoon for a hotel and we were going to leave Friday morning. We managed  to find a decent deal at an okay hotel in Golden Sands, Bulgaria. Almost every hotel at the Black Sea was 100% sold out. I was happy to get what we did.

The border crossing at Vama Veche was short and sweet. Despite the holiday traffic, we didn’t wait in line for too long and the guards were friendly. On a side note, my passport is starting to get pretty full of stamps. It’s a thing of beauty.

I won’t post the name of the hotel because while I enjoyed the food (mostly healthy), the room and the service was mostly meh. They advertised as a four star hotel, but I was reminded of a hotel at Panama City Beach. Let’s just say, it was in need of a remodel.

The pool was my favorite part of the whole thing. For those of you that know me, I am a total fish. I love being in the water and I love swimming. The pool was deep and cold. It was very nice for just swimming around and getting refreshed. On the days that we had sun, it was intense, so I was glad to jump in and take a break.

The boardwalk at Golden Sands is a nice walk. Lots of tourist shops and restaurants. They even have a little theme park with a small replica of the Eiffel Tour. Very kitsch and cute.

I wouldn’t mind coming back here if I could find an even cheaper rate. I would prefer to find a resort with more activities or near interesting tourist locations because I tend to get bored of the all-inclusive routine. Not to mention the behavior of some of the guests at meal time…think children riding bicycles and those stupid hover boards around the buffet or bringing your own speaker into the dining room so you can play manele for your table. We mostly ate outside on the terrace 😛

Being on the trip with friends helped to keep the boredom at bay – we played cards at night and took walks. Overall, it was very relaxing and I had a great time 🙂