Jellyfish on a Mission

On our beach

Moonrise from our balcony, looking toward our neighbors

Our beach

View down to the beach from a break in the Food Stall Walkway

A Doner Kepap Stand (VERY popular, the burrito of the Black Sea)

We've provided this stall with substantial business over the last three days

At the top of the stairs down to the beach

Sunset

Notes from Sozopol:

Jellyfish, reminiscent of coffee can lids melting around the edges, sometimes find themselves in our swimming bay. When they realize their mistake, they skim across the surface, making for the open sea like E.T. going home. 

The Black Sea is not black. From the cliffs above Sozopol, it is the electric blue you come across only rarely in a set of eyes, those blue blue eyes that always makes you want to ask the bearer if they have color contacts. But of course you never will. From a floating position, looking across the sea in every direction, it is the boiled down green of algae on Minnesota river rocks in August. Finally, when you look down into it and see the shells peeking out through the sand ripples and the seaweed beds shelving off, you realize that the Black Sea is clear. 

I never realized before that a beach is a perfect place for a blow up kiddie pool. Until today, when I vicariously experienced the bliss of a toddler sitting in his pool, shovel in hand, sandy water swirling around him. He had his own little patch of sea and beach, all to himself within the snug confines of pink plastic, and he couldn't have been happier about it. 

Bulgarian nectarines are the best nectarines. Bar none. Though the family scattered under the beach umbrella in front of mine this afternoon seemed to be enjoying their bag of tomatoes, eaten like apples, I side with the many families I've seen carrying a sack of ripe nectarines down the stairs and across to their sun soaking posts. Nectarines really are the ideal beach snack.