Wednesday, October 11, 2006


Несебър(Nessebar).

Visited the little fishermantown of Nessebar, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, today. Nessebar is kind of cool because it is in a little island made into a penninsula by a bridge connecting it to the mainland, a bit like Sirmione is in Lake Garda in Italy. Nessebar was inscribed in the World Heritag list for its importance as an ancient Thracian settlement, and its also its preserved ruins from the Byzantine era.

Nessebar is so tiny, though, and has become so flooded with tourists (today it was cold, and it is also off season, so there were not as many as I'm sure there are in the summer, judging from the abundance of shops and restaurants concentrated in an area less than half a kilometer square), that it feels a little bit like walking into a Disneyland "Byzantinetown" type of thing, and in reality, the size and the state of the ruins and even the shops wasn't really enough to hold my attention for more than a few hours.

Even their archaeology museum, with its single room, was disappointing (especially for the admissions price). For such a well-preserved city, they sure have very few artifacts on display. Apparently, sadly, the main draw here for visitors seem to be the tourist knick-knack souvenir shops, which I quickly ran away from not too long after arriving.

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