Bansko Reviews

• Overall Rating 5
• Family Friendly 4
• Downhill Terrain 4
• Terrain Park 4
• Nightlife 3

Pros: Cost and Skiing

Cons: not much

Recommended Skill Level: Intermediate
Recommended For: Families
Date Visited: Jan, 2009

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Full review

We have just returned from a weeks stay (11.01-18.01.09) in Bansko. We stayed at the Hotel Perun, half board and had pre purchased the 6 day ski package – ski/boot hire, lift pass and 6x4hr lessons. The exchange rate was 2lev to the pound.

Accommodation
The Hotel Perun, our second stay at this Hotel, was very good. The staff are friendly and much appreciated our attempts at speaking Bulgarian - A quick Dubro Utro (Good Morning) in the morning goes a long way. We never quite got it right when saying our room number in Bulgarian (Sto I tcheren) at meal times and when we got towels for the leisure area, which caused much amusement and a quick lesson in the local lingo. However, the staff could speak good English which helps and as the British people make up a small percentage of the tourist population (there are a lot more Russian, West European and Balkan tourists) we feel they do very well. We have heard of others complaining that it was hard to be understood but we suspect they are the sorts who try to get foreigners to understand English by speaking louder and slowly.

The rooms are a good size and on a par with the size one expects from North American Hotels. The rooms were clean and warm with lots of hot water. There were plenty of towels, nice bath robes and a pair of disposable slippers. The rooms also have a kettle, tea and coffee. The TV has a fair range of English speaking programmes and good coverage of the Premiership games live.

Meal times have greatly improved, Breakfast now starts at 7am and the evening meal was from 6pm to 10pm. There was a vast choice of foods at both meals and the quality was very good. There is also a small selection of foods cooked to order at breakfast, omelettes, pancakes and fried eggs. In the evening we would typically have a soup starter followed by salad. We then had meat/fish, potatoes and vegetables and finished of with a variety of puddings/cakes. The cost of drinks was reasonable, a bottle of wine cost approximately 30lev, glass of wine 3lev and a large local beer 4lev.

Sometimes the restaurant was busy in the evenings, especially around 7pm but we found that if there wasn’t a table available, popping down to the bar and returning after 15/20 minutes would be enough time to for tables to be freed up. The quality and availability of food did not alter at any time.

The Hotel is about 5 minute walk from the gondola but the Hotel offers free transport from and to the gondola and ski storage. We left our skis at the hire place and took our boots back to the room at night. We also only caught the bus once as it was snowing and we enjoyed the walk.

When we had finished skiing we went to the steam room, sauna, hot tub and a swim in the (very hot) outdoor pool.

Overall we were very satisfied with the accommodation and if we were to rate the above just in terms of price, (we estimated that that the Hotel cost us just £34 pppn – over 6 nights – we stayed 7 but as we had a small pack ups on our late arrival and early departure – we have not included this in the price break down) we would give this experience a healthy 10 out of 10.

Skiing
The snow conditions had steadily improved from late December and so by the time we got on the slopes, they were good. The Bansko resort has improved the area bellow the mid gondola station and reopened some difficult runs around the Chalin Volag, serviced by a new four person seat lift. The new nursery slope (1a) that comes off the route 1 snow road (about half way down) is a great area for learning and has more variety than the nursery slope at the top gondola station. We did not queue for more than 5 minutes for ski lifts but it advisable to make sure you get on the gondola before 9am. The electronic lift passes make passing through barriers very efficient. The gondola was not working on one morning and this caused a delay of one hour but it was the only problem we encountered all week. We travelled Sunday to Sunday and as such the organisation of getting boots/skis and into a ski class on Monday morning was quite quick. Also Saturday morning was a lot quieter than we expected it to be.

We had a very good instructor, Svetatsar, who was very good in meeting the needs of the group and he really took his time in his instruction and feedback. We feel we improved our skiing technique vastly this week. The group had 8 people in it on the first day but depending on what other things the individuals wanted to do, sometimes there were only three of us in the class. However, the quality of the instruction remained constant throughout. Rating this experience on cost alone – ski/boot hire, lift pass and 4 hours of lessons per day worked out at just over £21 per day per person. A 6 day lift pass bought at the resort costs 283lev. Again we would have to give this a10 out of 10.

Costs
The general costs have gone up over the last 24 months and the tourist pound is quite weak at the moment so items were more expensive. The cost of two chicken soups and mars bar on the slopes cost 15lev. I bought a litre bottle of beer from a kiosk on the walk back to the Hotel each afternoon which cost 3.5lev. The prices in the restaurants for a meal ranged from 17-35lev but as there is a lot of competition we were offered various discounts by people outside the restaurants ranging from 10% off to free bottles of wine – so it is worth negotiating before going in. We spent £100 each in incidental costs which mainly included lunches and a few drinks. Overall 8 out of 10 as eating out is more expensive than before but still cheaper than some places.