Resort Holiday In Sunny Beach For Just $99.50 Per Day

We never choose Sunny Beach for it’s rich culture. Nor did we choose it for its food.

Instead we chose it as a resting place. A place to work and write and just relax.

We chose it for all those reasons, but most of all we choose it because it was cheap.

Sunny Beach is a resort located on the Black Sea in Bulgaria. It’s filled with hotels, restaurants and entertainment. It’s also filled with Russians and Brits. English is widely spoken and nearly every restaurant offers a Sunday Roast. 

So how much did our month in Sunny Beach cost?

Accommodation

We rented a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment at Royal Sun resort complex. There were 3 swimming pools, 2 playgrounds, a restaurant and a mini mart on the premise, as well as a gym if you want to work out on your holiday.

The price included linen and all utilities, except Wi-Fi. It also included housekeeping once a week. 

Food

We usually ate out once a day, sometimes more. We are not really eat-on-the-run people so while there is definitely plenty of cheap fast food options from pizza slices at 1.99 lev (€1) or kebabs at 5 lev (€2.50), we usually ate at a restaurant.

Nessebar Old Town had great food, but was more expensive. Nessebar had good food and low prices. Sunny Beach rarely had good food or good prices. We probably ate at over 30 restaurants during our time here and only found a few jewels.

Alcohol is extremely cheap, however, with a beer costing 1 lev (€0.50) and cocktails anywhere from 3 - 8 lev (€1.50 - €4), but there is always a happy hour. 

Entertainment

The prices here are made for tourists so you will rarely find cheap entertainment. We went to two waterparks during this month, which both cost us 114 lev (€57) each time for the whole family.

This also included hiring a 4-person bicycle, kids jumping castles, a pirate cruise and other such activities. 

Groceries

We usually ate breakfast and lunch at home, mainly because we would be working or enjoying the pool or just to watch out fat/sugar levels ;)

There were two big supermarkets in Sunny Beach, a Lidl and Janet. The Lidl supported more of a Western feel and we could get the bus there for 2 lev (€1) or a taxi about 10 lev (€5) depending how hard you bargain.

Often we went once every week and a half and spent about AUD$60. For in-between times we would just hit the minimart outside our hotel, which was slightly more expensive. E.g. 11-litre bottle of water was 1 lev (€0.50) at Lidl and 4 lev (€2) at the mini mart.

If you wanted to save more money, then eating at home and from street vendors could get a month’s worth of food down to less than AUD$300 in total.

Transportation

When we first got to Sunny Beach we were taking taxis at ridiculous prices. We soon learnt that they were price fixing by a behind-the-scenes racket and decided to use the public bus system instead. In May the buses were very rare, but come June double-length bendy-buses hit the bus stops every 15 minutes. It was 1 lev (€0.50) per adult to ride the bus up and down the main street or 2 lev (€1) to take it to the supermarket.

$38 of this budget was one taxi ride out to Khan’s Tent. 

Personal

Personal is our kind of miscellaneous items. Included in this price was a jacket when I first arrived for $11 because it was really cold and then later a new bikini because I felt overdressed around the Europeans ($26). There was some medicine and other personal items as well.

This brings our total spending for one month to…

Not bad for a family of 4’s life of luxury in a resort, steps from the beach, eating out daily. Sound good to you?