Balchik

Balchik is one of those places whose entire character comes from an accident of borders. It sits on the northern Bulgarian Black Sea coast, built up a slope of pale chalk cliffs that give the town its old name — the White Town — but for a few decades in the early twentieth century it belonged to Romania, and a Romanian queen left her mark on it so thoroughly that the rest of the town has never quite recovered its own identity. I mean that as a compliment. We came for a night and stayed for three.

Queen Marie’s quiet folly

The reason everyone comes to Balchik is the palace of Queen Marie of Romania, though calling it a palace oversells the grandeur and undersells the charm. Marie — a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, restless and artistic and apparently incapable of building anything ordinary — had a summer residence put up here in the 1920s in a style she invented as she went: part Bulgarian, part Moorish, part Italian, with a slender minaret-like tower, whitewashed walls, and terraces that tumble down toward the sea through a tangle of courtyards, fountains, and stone pathways. It is not large. It is not symmetrical. It wanders, the way a house built by someone following their own taste rather than an architect’s plan tends to wander, and I found it completely disarming.

She had her heart buried in the little chapel here, which tells you something about how she felt about the place. Standing on the lowest terrace with the sea a few metres away and bees working the lavender, I understood the sentiment entirely. Lia, who is generally suspicious of royalty, was won over by a woman who clearly just wanted somewhere beautiful and slightly chaotic to be left alone.

The garden and the white town

Wrapped around and below the palace is the Botanical Garden, run now by Sofia University, and it is genuinely one of the best things on this stretch of coast. There is an enormous collection of cacti — said to be among the largest in Europe outside a dedicated desert glasshouse — which looks gloriously absurd planted out in the sea air, alongside rose terraces, a water-lily canal, ancient stone wine jars repurposed as planters, and shaded walks that smell of pine and salt at once. We spent an entire slow morning in it and felt no urge to hurry.

The town itself, away from the palace, is unpretentious and the better for it. The seafront promenade runs along below the cliffs, lined with fish restaurants where the catch is grilled simply and eaten with a sharp local white wine and a tomato salad. We ate turbot one evening as the sun went down behind the chalk, and a fisherman at the next table, entirely unprompted, explained the correct way to eat the cheeks. I have noticed this is a recurring feature of my travels — strangers determined to improve my technique. I have stopped resisting it.

When to go: May and June, when the garden roses are out and the coast hasn’t yet filled with summer crowds, or September for warm sea and quiet terraces. The palace and garden are best in the morning before the day-trip buses arrive from nearby Albena and Golden Sands. Balchik pairs naturally with Cape Kaliakra, a short drive up the coast.