We decided to buy in Britain as a lot
of the cars for sale in
Bulgaria appear to be repaired - in some cases badly.
When we drove back to Bulgaria we saw lots of crash
damaged cars being bought back on trailers. .
If you wander around the car sellers in Bulgaria
you will see cars being repaired at the back of their premises
- I wanted a full service history that was checkable.
.
Our son Andrew was already in Wales ahead of us. He had gone back to enjoy the Escape in the Park experience in Swansea. .
OK Step by step here we go. .
The first day was Wednesday the 8/6/05. We arrived at the airport an hour ahead of our departure time.
Varna is only a small airport so an hour is plenty of time to check in and be ready to board. .
We discovered our plane was delayed by at least two hours, so we left the airport and drove
into Varna for lunch. We had taken Andrews car with us and had left it at the Airport. .
We were fortunate that we could do this. Most of the other passengers had been delivered to the airport by coach or taxi and so they had no choice but to sit it out.
Bulgaria is two hours ahead of England so we arrived in London at six thirty English time.
.
We cleared customs collected our luggage and went in search of a hire car. This was easier
than we thought as it was signposted from the airport. .
We went with Avis who have an office at the airport itself. It cost us £247.00
to rent a medium sized car for 7 days. .
Alan drove just outside London and we decided to break the journey up and
book into a lodge room. The first one we came to was fully booked and told
us that all the other lodges were also full. .
Then he remembered the lodge rooms on the other side of the motorway had a boiler problem and so had spare rooms. .
We drove back to this service station and booked a room for the night at the reduced price of
£40.00 because there was no hot water in the room. .
We didn’t care. It was hot we were tired and all we wanted was a good nights sleep. .
We woke in the morning to find the water just warm enough to wash in. .
Life was good and we were off. .
We drove to Wales stopping off to see friends along the way. .
We arrived at our friends house at about four
in the afternoon. We caught up with all the news, had a Chinese and a drink and slept in the guest room of our friends house. .
It was Friday already and we began searching for cars in earnest. .
We wanted a Fiat Barchetta as we had test driven one the previous summer and fallen in love with it.
.
A good version with full service history costs around £4,000 .
We found a very good one in the paper and phoned the guy to arrange to see it.
He was In Swindon which wasn’t that far from us so we thought if it was as good
as it sounded we would be the proud owners by lunch time. .
It was not to be. I phoned the owner who said he was working in London and
visiting his family and would not be back in Swindon until Monday. .
As it turned out his parents lived close to the airport so Alan drove all he way back to London to see the car. .
It was every bit as good as the owner had said it was, so Alan bought it and
Alan drove the hire car back to the airport while the owner followed in the Barchetta. .
We got a refund of £112.00 from Avis. By the time Alan arrived back in Wales he was shattered
- but was still smiling! .
He still took me for a drive in our new car. It was great. .
Next Page? Click here
.