IF you are looking for a vacation of peace and quiet, you will not find it in Zlatni Piasutsi (Golden Sands).
The last time I went there must have been 11 years ago and, my God, the place has changed.
Unfortunately, we happened to go to Zlatni Piasutsi when the weather was really bad, but this did not scare the numerous tourists from the UK, Russia and Germany who were taking a walk wondering whether or not to go to the beach after all. The truth is, clouds or no clouds, the resort was quite full and mostly with foreign tourists.
As a matter of fact, we, and the staff in various restaurants, shops and hotels, were the only people whose native language was Bulgarian.
The resort has changed a lot since the last time I was there - almost beyond recognition.
There are many new hotels - each bigger than the last. Several were still under construction.
The resort has always been the pride and joy of the Bulgarian tourist industry and in its centre still stands the huge and not very aesthetically pleasing building of the Hotel International. In more recent times, however, other monstrosities have also been built - the architects apparently aiming at cramming the highest possible number of rooms into the smallest possible space.
Now about construction - heavy machinery I did not see, but several hotels were covered in scaffolding and workers were busy finishing them on a tight schedule.
Some of them were almost finished and porters were carrying in the furniture.
Another striking thing were the many restaurants, pubs, cafes and various other tourist traps. The racket from the stereo systems of those places was nerve-wracking as apparently they all were competing to be louder than the next one only a few metres away. And the music was not of high quality either - as one was playing Britney Spears, the next bar was playing some loud rap music with lots of the f-word in it, while the one on the other side was blaring some Euro-disco or something of the kind. Above all this noise Celine Dion was raising her voice: "All by myse-e-e-e-lf..."
So much for sitting on the balcony with its magnificent view of the sea and just listening to the waves crashing on the beach some 20 metres below. This is a mission impossible.
Fortunately for us, it rained heavily in the evening so the bars closed quite early for the night and we managed to get some sleep.
Not for long, though. At 7am when the sun showed itself briefly, the two beach bars beneath our windows started up the music again.
Fifteen minutes later at the bar-to-be further down the lane, some assiduous worker started hammering and drilling.
The rather long walk I took in the morning before I left revealed the fact that in spite of the large number of people and the best attempts of some of them to litter as much as possible, the lanes and the beaches of the resort were rather clean.
The other curiosity was the stray dogs, which unabashedly were sleeping in the gardens in front of the hotels or were begging for food and eating it in front of the restaurants. The foreign tourists thought this was cute.
After all I have seen I can't force myself to recommend Zlatni Piasutsi. I for one would not take my vacation there because I associate vacation with peace and quiet and lack of crowds.
Apparently, however, there are people who like the kind of vacation this resort offers, judging by the busloads of tourists who were arriving at regular intervals at the improvised bus stop near hotel Admiral where we were staying.