Sunny Beach (Bulgarian: Slanchev bryag) is a Bulgarian resort community located in the southern end of the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast along a semi-circular bay. Known locally as Bulgaria’s Beverly Hills, it is the country’s largest resort boasting 800 luxury hotels with 300,000 beds. Incidentally, it is also the funny-shaped pool capital of the world.¹

Construction on the town began in 1958 during the Soviet occupation. It has a very small permanent group of inhabitants and stays almost completely empty for most of the year. However, during the summer months the resort’s population can swell with many thousands of tourists from Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Aerial views of Sunny Beach reveal the sheer number of unique pools that dot town. Actually, it seems a distinct possibility that rectangular-shaped pools might have been made illegal at some point.

Exploring Sunny Beach’s many pools is rather like picking shapes out of passing clouds. Each one seems to be unique with some having some interesting resemblances to other objects. Here’s one that looks like Mickey Mouse’s head:

And here’s another that looks like…well…you get the idea:

You can learn more about Sunny Beach at the official website and on Wikipedia.

Thanks to Capital C.

So what are we looking at here? Well, it’s clearly a bus about to crash into a Roman Amphitheatre. Duh.

This is the second largest city in Bulgaria, Plovdiv, which is built around 7 hills. Back in the 70s they were digging up one of these hills in order to extend a major road and unearthed this ancient Roman Theatre. Rather than just plowing on, the road was relocated into a tunnel under the hill. The Theatre was preserved and today is regularly used for concerts and performances. (Ground level photo).

Thanks: Georgi Petrov