Hotel Mura Beach Reviews

Having looked on this website, we chose Albena and are very pleased we did. We visited St. Konstantine (very nice but smaller than Albena)and Golden Sands (a bit too commercial for us).

We also, in our opinion, chose the best hotel, as it is at the very edge of the resort, but easily accessible, and right on the beach. We could not fault the hotel or the food. We were half board and could always find something to eat. There was a a very extensive choice at both breakfast and dinner. Towards the end of the fortnight, we ate out in the evenings, as we became bored with the main courses, but the gateaux were absolutely delicious!

The hotel complex consists of two other hotels, the Gergana and the Slavuna. The pool is shared by all 3 hotels and is only a short walk away. It is a good sized pool, certainly bigger than some of the others we saw. It wasn't crowded either, although we were there before the schools finished for the summer.

If you want to change money at the hotel, change it in the supermarket across from the reception as you will get a slightly better rate. No problem changing sterling travellers' cheques there either.

If you walk along the beach, with the sea on your left, you go past the nudist beach and eventually end up in Kranevo. There are beach cafes where you can get food and drinks for about half the price of the main resort. Take the path to the right of the Imperial and walk inland up to the village where you will find lots of stalls and shops and restaurants.

We however liked the opposite end of the resort. Walking along with the sea on your right, you eventually come to the Arabella restaurant and if you go past it you get to the Beer Kartel. It's a lovely little place for a cheap lunch or cheap beer - about 1.5 leva for a half litre of beer(less than 60p). Friendly staff as well whose English is quite good in comparison to staff at some of the restaurants.

We liked Balchik, and intended to visit the palace and museums there and also do the trip to Istanbul, but know we will be returning next year, so have left those until then.

This is the first year Thomson have featured Bulgaria, but as it is so cheap and such a lovely place with beautiful beaches and friendly people, we are sure it will grow in popularity. The Slavuna Hotel has a privately run bar which is open 24 hours, handy to return to at the end of the evening. We spent many happy hours there with Breda, Joe, Mark and Jackie from Birmingham. (They had come AOA three stars with Balkan, so were very fortunate to end up at the Gergana on a b and b deal for about £260 each for the fortnight. We had considered AOA but wanted to make sure we were in Albena and not Golden Sands.)

If you do drink at the Slavuna bar, please say hello from Peter and Susan to the lovely bar staff; Julia, Ilya and Svetli. It was our first visit to Bulgaria, but will be our destination of choice next year and hopefully many years to come!

After being very unsure of going to Bulgaria after reading some of the reviews on here, but hearing very good reports from people who we knew who had visited, we arrived with some trepidation. How wrong we were. It was lovely, the people are so friendly and cheerful, being especially nice to children.

Before I forget I must say hello to George in the Hotel shop. If you want a good deal on Benson and Hedges and a good exchange rate then George is the man to see! He also has a good stock of leather belts at about 3 quid each!

The food in the Hotel was very good, freshly fried eggs every morning and lots of palatable bread. The meat did have a tendency to be a bit pink or slighly cremated but there always seemed to be something we could eat. There were also pancakes freshly cooked every morning and nescafe coffee yum yum! Kristian the Restaurant manager is a diamond of a man and could not have been more friendly. If you do go ask him to wear his Man City shirt for you (good man).

People who complain about the facilities and the resort are in my opinion asking a bit too much and should go to Butlins! For a country with a past like Bulgaria has I think it is fantastic. I have not felt so relaxed and so safe on holiday for a long time.

One downside was the supermarket which is near the bus station, we went in there quite a few times and spent a lot of money but everytime we went in we were closely followed by 2 security staff, to the point where we had to ask them to move so that we could look at things! This was very annoying as it only seemed to be the English people who were followed, we did ask why this was so and were assured that it was not the case, but believe me it was!

We visited the Aquapolis water park whilst we were there which cost us less than 30 quid for 4 adults and 1 child. Very reasonable! If you do book this trip through Thompsons they will tell you that they charge for children by age rather than by height as the water park does. This only problem with this was that we payed child price for our son who is 11 but when we got there he had to have a different colour wrist band which meant that although he was well over the height to go on the bigger rides he was not allowed because he had the wrong colour band!

The entertainment in the Hotel or should I say between the 3 hotels was very good, the shows at night were rather samey, but the games during the day were fun and kept us entertained. A big hello also to valy who is just so full of boundless energy she tires you out just watching her!

We will be going back to Bulgaria next year but we are going to try Golden Sands just to see which one we prefer. Oh by the way if you are flying with Astraeus dont worry about that either because they were brilliant too and the pilot on the return journey was very funny cracking jokes all through the flight! Think his name was Adam