A nine-show week has a lot of daytime in it. Burgas is a city of around 225,000 people, the fourth-largest municipality in Bulgaria, and it is a working port town rather than a resort — which is exactly why it is more interesting to spend a week in than the resorts up the coast.
Here is what a local would actually send you to do.
The Sea Garden
Start here, because everyone does and everyone is right. The Morska Gradina is a long park laid out along the clifftop above the sea, running the whole length of the city's front. It is more than a century old, full of mature trees, statues, cafés, an open-air Summer Theatre, and it ends at the pier.
Walk the length of it in the evening and you have seen how Burgas actually lives: families, teenagers, dogs, old men playing chess, and the sea on your right the whole way. It is also the most likely home of the Eurovision Village, though that has not been announced.
The pier (Mostikat) juts out from the middle of the park. It is the postcard, it is where everyone photographs the sunrise, and on a windy May evening it is bracing in a way you will remember.
The beach
Burgas has a central beach directly below the Sea Garden — wide, sandy, with the distinctive dark sand of this bay. In May it is nearly empty and perfectly pleasant for walking, sitting and being cold in the water for thirty seconds.
North of the city, Sarafovo beach is quieter and next to the airport. South, Kraymorie is small and green. The big sweeping beaches are further up and down the coast — see day trips.
The lakes and the birds
This is the thing about Burgas almost no visitor knows and it is genuinely special. The city sits between three large lakes — Atanasovsko, Burgasko and Mandrensko — on the Via Pontica, one of Europe's major bird migration routes. Around 60% of Bulgaria's bird species have been recorded here.
May is peak migration. Pelicans, herons, flamingos in recent years, storks, waders and terns. Atanasovsko Lake is a salt lake immediately north of the city, still worked for salt, with a visitor trail, salt pans and mud that people bathe in. You can reach it on a city bus.
If you have a free morning and any interest at all in birds, this is the most distinctive thing you can do here — and it is free.
Museums and buildings
Burgas's museums are small, cheap and easy to fit into a couple of hours:
- The Ethnographic Museum — regional costume and crafts, in a fine nineteenth-century house.
- The Archaeological Museum — Thracian and Greek finds from the coast, which is where the interesting history is.
- The Natural History Museum — the lakes and the birds, well done and good with children.
- The Art Gallery — housed in a former synagogue, worth it for the building alone.
The centre itself is worth a slow walk: Alexandrovska and Bogoridi streets are pedestrianised, lined with restored late-Ottoman and interwar façades, and the Armenian and Orthodox churches in the old quarter are open and quiet.
Eating and drinking
Burgas eats fish, and it eats it well and cheaply. Look for tsatsa (fried sprat, eaten whole, by the plateful), safrid (horse mackerel), and whatever is on the board that day. The fish restaurants in Sarafovo are where locals drive out to eat, and they are worth the bus ride.
Beyond fish: shopska salad, tarator (cold cucumber and yoghurt soup, perfect after a warm day), grilled meats, and banitsa from any bakery for breakfast. Bulgarian wine is good and absurdly cheap by Western European standards — ask for something from Melnik or the Thracian valley.
Coffee culture is serious here and the centre is full of small independent places. A coffee is €1.50–2.50; see budget and prices for the rest.
If it rains
May brings 8–9 rain days across the month, usually as short showers. Everything above except the lakes works in the rain, and the museums, the art gallery and the covered market are all specifically good wet-weather options.
Fitting it around the shows
The contest schedule leaves you: all day Monday to Wednesday, most of Thursday, and all of Friday. Semi-finals and the final are evening events, and the preview shows are afternoons.
A sensible week: lakes and birds one morning, Sea Garden and beach on the warm afternoons, museums on the wet one, a day trip on the Wednesday or Friday, and the fish restaurants in Sarafovo on the night without a show. That leaves plenty of evenings for the part you actually came for.