Experience the best of Burgas

Burgas curves around its bay on the southern Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, a port and refinery city with a leafy centre. The Sea Garden runs along the shore, with sand beaches below, and Alexandrovska Street is the pedestrian main street, and the church of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the city's largest, stands a short way off it. The city's galleries and theatre sit in streets of early twentieth-century buildings.

Salt lakes and lagoons ring the city, including Atanasovsko, with its salt pans, and Lake Burgas, which together make a stopover for migrating storks, pelicans and other birds on the Via Pontica flyway. South along the coast, Sozopol's old town on a rocky peninsula has wooden houses on cobbled lanes, and Nessebar, a UNESCO-listed peninsula town with Byzantine churches, lies to the north. The Strandzha hills rise inland.

Black Sea fish, grilled or fried, mussels, shopska salad and cold tarator soup are everyday dishes, with rakia as the local spirit and honey from the Strandzha hills. Summer fills the beaches with warm water and long days. Winters are mild by Bulgarian standards, with grey, windy spells off the sea.