Skiing Holiday in Pamporovo, Bulgaria.

Skiing Holiday in Pamporovo, Bulgaria.
20th to 27th January 2007

the holiday was booked through www.fasttrackski.co.uk, the operator was www.Crystalski.co.uk which is in partnership with www.thomsonski.co.uk
booked coach from London Victoria to Stansted via www.terravision.it , cheaper than national express.

booked the coach for 11am on saturday (20th jan) and told everyone to meet up at victoria. i thought the coach station at victoria is just outside the railway station, how wrong i was.
as usual, being tamil, they thought they can arrive at victoria at 11 and catch the coach, doh!
after the final person arrived at victoria it was a mad dash to find the coach station, of course different coaches departed from different places and we ended up where national express coaches depart, then after asking several strangers and going the wrong way we managed to find the place, then we asked a guy who seemed to be an official and he said the coach had left, then there was a guy loading up a coach with luggage and we asked him and he said that this was tha coach and complained about us arriving at 11 to catch a 11am departure coach, doh! of course if the coach had terravision written on it we wouldnt have been so confused. the coach turned out to be almost empty and we go on our way to stansted.

we arrived at stansted at 12.15pm, thought we needed to arrive early in order to book seats next to each other, had about 2 hours to kill before checking in so went to a pub and watched the liverpool-chelski game! what a win! as long as we can do the same to man u and  arsenal its all good.  then about 1.30 or something we decided to go to check in and queue up thinking that we would be the first in the queue, oh bugger! almost last in the queue, lotta waiting on the queue about 45 mins or so, then finally got checked in and into the duty free.

first security check went fine, no beeping no excessive checking, people infront were told they cannot take their babie's baby oil , baby lotion, etc..etc..
then onto the next where they check your shoes, some people get let thru, some random people are told to take their shoes off and put thru a scanner, i had to!

then after putting the shoes on, another stop, just police checking passports, my friend got checked not me,  then we were finally into the duty free,
dixons/currys didnt have wii games, HMV had Wii games and advertised it like there was a lotta saving to be had, but it was more expensive than in outside shops
doh!

after everyone did their duty free shopping we  boarded the plane at 16.45pm and didnt look forward to the 3 hour flight...played black jack (not 21) for 3 hours interrupted by food,
then one of the trolley dollies saw that my friend had his mobile on (flight mode or not), she told him to turn it off and then proceeded to tell the captain about the incident, which we didnt realise till we heard the captains announcement. "i have been informed that a few passengers have their mobile phones switched on.;..............."  doh!!!

then the landing, which was unexpected as i was in the middle of explaining something, took me a few seconds to realise that we landed..landed about 19.;45pm which in local time was 21.45pm

sofia aiport is pretty small, smaller than kattunayake, the plane stopped about half a football pitch length from the doors to the airport, but we still had to get on a coach, and be driven a scenic route around 2 other planes before they dropped us off, then started the chaos of queues for toilets and luggage.

bulgarian passport checker didnt give any trouble, managed to get the luggage and straight outside to meet our crystal ski rep, told to catch the number 2 bus, we went outside and we saw "1" "3" and "22" , is that 2 or 22, turned out to be 2, just that sheets of paper had moved, if there were three pieces of paper it wouldve been 222!

i didnt like the coach at all, pretty much like the coaches you would get in sri-lanka, covered in mud, old old coach! and we spent 4 hours on this going from Sofia to Pamporovo.
there were two bulgarians in the coach, one driver and the other guide, the guide goes "the drivers name is krazy" ...gr8! then the guide spent about 30 mins telling us about bulgaria, he said about 5 mins worth of information. then he finally got the hint that people wanted him to shut up and he did. then we it was a long long drive playing black jack.