There’s still an year to go before the IOC announces the winner (July 7, 2007, at IOC session in Guatemala City). Bulgaria’s bid for the Winter Olympics of 2014 is Sofia (along with Borovetz and Bansko ski resorts). Sofia’s bid was the first to hit the table in 2004.
The current favorite is Austria’s bid – Salzburg. In a couple of days, IOC is expected to select the initial short list of 2014 candidates. Hopefully Sofia will be among them. In the unlikely event that Sofia wins the bid, property prices in the ski resorts are expected to soar as millions of euros will go into infrastructure projects.
A recent review of Bulgaria’s Black Sea resorts was published on Unison.ie:
While Spain and such baked in temperatures of 37 degrees, Bulgaria was a pleasant mid-to-late 20s, so one could move around without fear of heat stroke and that propelled us into moving off our loungers and going into Varna to potter and get some culture in.
Bulgaria is not retail/spa posh in the way we in Ireland have become used to, but it is lovely and decent and rich in other ways. I want to go back and explore much more.
In terms of package holidays, Bulgaria is a great value – even better than Morocco. Go there now while it is still a bargain, because in 2007 Bulgaria is to due to enter the European Union, and those of us already living in high-priced euro land know you can kiss goodbye to it being a good-value haven.
We went only for a week but my eight-year-old son and I wish we could have stayed longer. No English language TV and we still hadn’t managed to get bored. Amazing.