Черная дыра. Агония, под названием Preslav ** Black hole. Agony, called Preslav**

I am glad to welcome you, Dear travelers, tourists, vacationers or planning their holidays in Bulgaria, in particular at the Golden Sands Resort - Preslav Hotel! : )

I would like to share my experience of staying at this hotel.
Before the trip, I studied the demand for certain budget hotels in this fabulous country, which I visit for the second time. Rested with a girl, in the period from 02.06. 2013 to 14.06. 2013, a ticket for two cost 7200 UAH, was booked in the last days of February at some kind of super-discount of 660 euros for everything, including visas and bus travel for two, which actually served as one of the main criteria for choosing this hotels.

Now in essence:
1. Hotel - this is loudly said, I would designate this building as a pioneer camp, and far from "Artek": ) in the extreme it can be equated to a boarding house. The darkness of children who arrive / depart / arrive and leave on transfers, all this is put on a large stream, because.

the discount for children is significant and they rest there in groups, mainly from the countries of the former CIS, with us there were Muscovites, Yakuts, Ukrainians. While I will miss all the details, they will be taken into account in section #2 and #3 (food / service). The accommodation itself is quite satisfactory, we are unpretentious people, everything suited us, I was surprised by the pressure in the shower, like from a hose, the very handle of the shower pulled out of the brush, from such a stream of water. The mattresses are hard, on a spring block, at first some discomfort was felt, after, apparently, they got used to it, therefore, I do not recommend this hotel to people suffering from curvature of the spine, because between the multi-spring block that I use at home and the usual metal spring block - the difference is very significant.
In general, the room is tolerable, with everything you need to stay there. Hairdryer, iron - no, no dishes either.
They didn’t ask for a hair dryer, the girl brought her own, the iron is at the reception, they don’t give it to the room, you iron right around the corner, on the ironing board, it’s stupid, uncomfortable, but such fire safety requirements (as we were explained on the spot) I meet this for the first time. There was an air conditioner, I did not see the need to turn it on, and therefore I was also not interested in where the control panel was. Wet cleaning every day, change of linen and towels was 3 times in 12 nights.
Now, in order, +/- numbers and placements in general:
Pros: a good shower, a room with old furniture slightly immerses you in the atmosphere of the 70s, when this "hotel" was built, windows overlooking the park, in which, in principle, the entire Golden Sands resort is completely immersed.
Cons: from the little things, a balcony with dividing wooden bars, through which people resting nearby are visible, no sound insulation, there is no way to retire on the balcony, but this is not critical, because.
in fact, there is nothing to sit on, a semblance of chairs and some kind of plastic stool in the role of a "table", the back of the chair sags with a slight back load on it. There is no elementary rope on the balcony - for drying clothes, I tried to get it at the reception, but it didn’t work out, they couldn’t buy it, because they wanted to do it in Varna, they didn’t find it there, and at the resort they noticed it on sale only in the last days of rest , did not buy. There is no lift. By number, everything.


2. Nutrition. "Restaurant" is located in the basement on the 0 floor, there is a small terrace on the street. The food is quite edible, without frills and abundance, but there was still a variety in lunches and dinners for 12 nights. We are not picky about food, the only thing we tried not to eat these artificially tasteless sausages. The diet of the standard Bulgarian troika with meat, fish, vegetables.
Fruits were present, during our stay there were always apples, oranges, very pleased with delicious grapefruits, in the last week there was a struggle for peaches, cherries and apricots. There was ice cream, more about it in the minuses of the kitchen. The kitchen itself resembles an inn in a castle, heavy metal chandeliers with the usual uncovered lamps. Medium wooden tables and very bulky wooden chairs.

Now in order, +/- food:

Pros: glassware for alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, which personally pleased me very much, because I hate drinking from plastic (and it is mainly accepted in this level of hotels), a variety of pork dishes, I really liked and, accordingly, I remember pork ribs at the last meal.
Literally for five days we found honey baklava, for which, as you understand, there was not a hefty struggle with youth, but when we managed to grab it, it was a small holiday, a really super tasty thing : ) Everything about sweets, there was always no cookies with some cream, occasionally ate small croissants with jam for breakfast.

Cons: the kitchen is perhaps the very fly in the ointment that crosses out the generally tolerable impression of this building called Preslav. Actually, her organization of the trays of finished baking sheets with dishes, or rather, the complete lack of organization, when the staff had to be reminded of the ending food, and to do this regularly, which did not give the slightest pleasure.
As I mentioned earlier about ice cream, ice cream is a separate story, for all 12 nights I ate it 2 times, due to the fact that there, from the very beginning to the end of the dinner, there was a terrible queue of children trying to pick out from extremely thin plastic containers that sagged under the pressure of spoons - this frozen miracle.


Also, the kitchen was pleased with the fact that at the entrance to it, we were regularly checked, asking for the room number, consistently for lunch and dinner, it seemed that they were indifferent to our red bracelets, talking about All inclusive, and we are generally people from the street who came to eat for free and spend the night on a free couch, of course I'm exaggerating, but that's how I perceived the current situation there. By the way, bracelets without the name of the hotel, which again I have never met.
I was also pleased with the case when for the first time I was able to push my way to ice cream and fill a glass with this frozen mass, when I tried to leave the territory of the "restaurant" I was stopped by a curly-haired pseudo-security officer who forbade me to leave the territory of the kitchen with ice cream, of course, to a clear question why - an adequate answer did not follow, just a printed piece of paper was shown on the wall, with ice cream crossed out. Naturally, I did not comply with his directives, and arbitrarily left the place where I had previously taken food, they put out a hand and attempted to leave me in the abdomen, to the exclamation: "take your hands off, " he changed dramatically in his face, and something else shouted after us in Bulgarian for a long time.
A mosquito was baked in french fries, not critical, but the level of cleanliness of the kitchen speaks not from the best side. Photo attached.
There were never enough places in the "restaurant", people were forced to rush about with full plates, their eyes were looking for free tables, there was the most natural slaughter for a free chair (especially among children, and this is out of season). Probably everything in the kitchen.

Service:
We are reasonable people, and we understand that for such money you cannot demand a five-star resolution level service, in which we did not arrive, but still, I would like to highlight this particular point, because in my opinion it is the BASIC one when choosing a hotel. Almost all the kitchen attendants were very young, it seemed that they were recruited here exclusively for the season that would pass and there would be a new batch of applicants.

They looked like disheveled tomboys, dressed in a white bottom and a black top, while the shirts were dimensionless and did not always tuck into trousers, some of them wore jeans and colored shirts, allowed themselves to loudly discuss something in Bulgarian, walking between the tables, during the meal itself, which created the atmosphere of a noisy bazaar.
In general, requests at the reception were fulfilled quickly, but not without losses, an electrician was called twice, after the first time the light worked for a couple of hours, and disappeared again, the second time the repair was made better than the previous one.
When checking out from a room that was supposed to be at 12-00, we left the room at 11-00, they refused to place the suitcases from 11 to 16 at their reception desk until our transfer, they offered to leave them in an open room, out of their viewing area, there where there was a courtyard, and anyone who wanted to could open a suitcase and get everything he liked, but after some discussion, the receptionist was convinced that we should be allowed into a room with video surveillance, and leave our two modest suitcases there. The minus of All inclusive for drinks and alcohol is that it is valid at the lobby bar only until 21-00, which personally amused me and forced me to collect what I wanted in advance and take it out of the "Restaurant" so as not to run to the store later .
I also have to bring you one egregious case about the lobby bar, surprisingly I liked the beer in the hotel, its name is Pinsko (I could be wrong), it’s very tasty, but it’s delicious only, oddly enough, only in the kitchen, and in the pool bar, at the reception at the lobby bar it's completely the wrong beer, but that's not about it. Somehow I, who approached the bar, ordered a beer, behind the bar there was a bartender and a person, apparently, either a plumber, or a person who changes pins with beer by connecting some pipe communications to them. The situation is as follows, this "mechanic" blocked the passage to the beer faucet, and the bartender, as if nothing had happened, silently handed him a glass into which he poured beer, he took the glass almost by the upper rim, in the place where we raise our lips and we drink any liquid, with our dirty, unwashed hands, after handling the pipes.

Of course, I did not drink this beer, a remark was made to the bartender and the liquid quickly proceeded to the washbasin. After that, another bartender changed, the most sane in my opinion, his name is Martin, who poured me a beer. .
The pool, which I never visited, the lack of a sufficient number of sunbeds, I counted about 25 for the entire hotel, this is the problem of many hotels of this level, but 25 for such a number of rooms is unacceptable. All inclusive by the pool works only on the principle of beer + diluted UPI, everything, nothing more, very scarce, I was not interested in its working time, what I remember, the lifeguards are there from 8 to 17 hours daily.

Later, I decided to talk to the manager, an ordinary employee, his name is Rado, who listened to me, but practically did not comment on what I left in the complaint book.
Moreover, I was surprised by the fact that negative reviews were sealed with laudatory praises, I specially took a photo of the review and this "review journal" itself without printing and numbered pages, but it doesn't matter, I personally numbered up to half of the journal, this is unlikely to somehow affect further entries, but still. I asked him a question about the room number that was constantly asked at the entrance to the dining room, answered ambiguously, as far as I understand, the "hotel" does not work on any other systems such as: BB, HB, exclusively AL (All Lnclusive) as evidenced by the inscription on prices at the reception itself, he also stated the following: someone drove in according to the documents for a full ration, but in reality it turned out differently, they say they mixed up the documents, and in this regard they were forced to ask for the number of rooms, it is unlikely, because
it is unlikely that anyone would have called the true number in such cases, given such circumstances, we assumed that they simply entered the statistics of visits to the kitchen by one or another number of people, in order to understand how much food needs to be cooked.

From losses:

I will not sin on anyone, but a small gold ring disappeared from the number, the girl has two of them, they were left in the same place all the time, and at one fine moment it was not found. There is a version that we could accidentally knock it down / move it from the table to the floor, with some of our things, after cleaning it could end up in a cleaning lady’s rag and washed off in the toilets, but some left a negative imprint, they didn’t sound the alarm, they checked everything on their own by moving the furniture away , but alas, to no avail.
I left a sports windbreaker in that very "notorious" restaurant, which was safely taken out, either by the staff or by the hotel guests, which is actually not surprising, because it was mainly inhabited by our brothers Slavs!
That's my whole story in general, detailed photos will be in a couple of days.

P. S. I would like to add the following, if you want to hide from our everyday life, not hear Russian speech, not look at your feet, so as not to catch the child’s head with your elbow near the nearest tray of food, and relax at a level not much higher than what I described here, it’s better to overpay tighter a hundred euros per person, study hotel reviews more carefully and go to Sunny Beach, because it seemed to me that Golden Sands was tailored for our people, Russian / Georgian music played from every second tavern, I didn’t notice anything like this last year on Sunny Beach It was.
We made our conclusions, managed to ride around Bulgaria, fall in love with it even more, but this is not at all here.

I wish you a pleasant stay and pleasant service for your money!
All the best and see you soon friends!