Burgas or Varna?

Both cities offer the same warm, gently shelving Black Sea and the same short season, but the beaches differ. Burgas's Central Beach has soft, dark sand that is rich in iron, and it lies close to the commercial port. Many locals therefore head out to Sarafovo, Kraimorie or the dunes towards Pomorie, and the small bays of Sozopol are within an hour.

Varna's city beach feels more organised, with piers, beach clubs and lifeguarded sections right below the Sea Garden. The wider sand lies 10km to 20km north in a chain of resorts that starts at St Konstantin and Elena, and the quieter beaches are towards Balchik or past Kamchia.

At the table the two are very close, and both are built on fried sprats, Black Sea mussels, turbot and shopska salad at simple places near the water. In Burgas, the cheap local wines from the Pomorie vineyards and the Thracian reds are a good reason to linger. Varna leans on mussels from the farms offshore, crisp regional whites and rakia to start the meal. Its tavern scene away from the promenade is slightly deeper, although its seafront kitchens mostly close once summer ends.

Varna gives the sightseer clearly more. The Archaeological Museum holds gold from the Necropolis that is around six thousand years old, among the oldest worked gold anywhere. The Roman Thermae in the old Odessos quarter are a substantial ruin, and the Aladzha cliff monastery and the Euxinograd palace add variety on the edges of the city.

Burgas is a younger port whose best-loved landmark is a park, the Sea Garden. A few small regional museums, a boat to St Anastasia Island and the excavated baths of Aquae Calidae make for a pleasant but light programme.

For going out, Varna is the better bet in summer. A row of beach clubs below its Sea Garden runs big terraces with DJs until dawn, and people move from one to the next along the promenade. Golden Sands is only a short taxi ride further north. Even out of season, students keep the bars in the pedestrian centre busy at weekends.

In Burgas, the summer nights are spent in beach bars and the bars around Aleksandrovska and Bogoridi streets, with only a handful of clubs. For a full party night you have to travel about forty minutes to Sunny Beach.

Burgas has the more distinctive outdoors, because it is ringed by the Vaya, Atanasovsko, Mandra and Pomorie lakes on the Via Pontica flyway. In late summer and autumn, pelicans and white storks pass overhead and flamingos feed in the salt pans, and the Poda reserve has hides. Strandzha's oak and beech hills are an hour south.

Varna's landscapes are more scattered: the stone columns of Pobiti Kamani, the flooded riverside forest at Kamchia, and the red cliffs of Cape Kaliakra, where dolphins are often seen. Neither city has mountains within reach.

Both make good bases, but they point in different directions. Burgas sits between two old coastal towns, medieval Nessebar to the north and wooden-housed Sozopol to the south, each about forty minutes away. Pomorie, with its salt museum and Thracian tomb, is closer still.

Varna's best outings go inland and into early Bulgarian history: the Madara Rider carved on its cliff, the ruined capitals of Pliska and Preslav, and the fortress above Shumen. Balchik's palace gardens and Kaliakra pair nicely in one drive, while Nessebar is a longer haul of about an hour and a half.

Varna is the easier city with children, because so much is gathered in its Sea Garden: a small zoo, the old aquarium, a planetarium, the Natural History Museum and playgrounds, with lifeguarded beaches down the steps. Water parks at the resorts north of the city are only a short ride away.

Burgas offers the gentle, warm water, the shade and playgrounds of its own Sea Garden, and a flat centre that is easy with a pushchair. Beyond that, the attractions built for children are up the coast, so it relies more on the beach, the boat to St Anastasia and the birds.

Both centres are compact and flat enough to cover on foot. Burgas is the smoother place to arrive and move about, with the airport close to the city, easy cycling along the seafront and around the lakes, and regional buses that run straight down the coast to Sozopol, Pomorie and Nessebar, even though they crowd up in high summer.

In Varna, the buses are harder for a newcomer to read, with Cyrillic signs and packed summer services. Most visitors use cheap taxis, and a hire car or a tour makes much more sense for its inland day trips.

Neither city is a shopping destination. In both you will find high-street chains on a pedestrian street and malls on the edge of town. The difference lies in what you bring home. Burgas offers Black Sea salt from Pomorie, honey and Pomorie wine, while Varna adds embroidered linens, painted ceramics and rakia to the rose oil cosmetics that both sell.

Both cities are equally inexpensive by Western European standards, and in both, July and August are when rooms climb and need booking early. In Burgas, a room in the city is often cheaper than one in the resorts it serves, and outside summer it becomes very cheap indeed. In Varna, the beach clubs and Golden Sands cost noticeably more than the centre, and June or September give you a warm sea at lower rates.

Varna has the richer stage life, especially in summer. Its opera performs in a grand early twentieth-century theatre on the main square, alongside the State Puppet Theatre. The Varna Summer festival, whose roots go back to the 1920s, moves concerts, theatre and jazz into the Sea Garden, and in some years the city hosts the International Ballet Competition.

Burgas has its own State Opera and philharmonic, and its open-air beach stages hold summer festivals from classical to big pop and rock. Its rarest offering lies in the Strandzha villages, where nestinari fire-dancing survives as a living custom.

Both cities stand on mineral springs that the Romans used, but the spa experience differs. In Burgas it is earthier. The black, salty mud of the Atanasovsko and Pomorie lakes is used for wraps in the sanatoria, and many people simply smear it on at the shore and let it dry. The more polished spa hotels are in Pomorie.

Varna's spa life is concentrated in the wooded resort of St Konstantin and Elena, about 10km from the centre, which has mineral pools and spa hotels. Warm mineral taps by the shore add a small local ritual.