Family Hotel Balkana: Residence with mountain views

Small town of Apriltsi is located in the middle of mountain scenery at the foot of Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria. This coalition of four villages offers plenty of possibilities for outdoor-enthusiast and mountain-lovers, and is a starting point for some awesome hikes, like hiking to Botev Peak in Balkan Mountains. There are some high-grade accommodation options, out of which Family Hotel Balkana in Vidima village stands out with reasonable prices and outstanding customer reviews.

The big and stylish, three-story house is not only a hotel with a dozen rooms, but also home of the owner couple Peter and Eva and their twin boys, and there is a small restaurant that they run. The rooms are spacious and cozy, with clean bathrooms and balconies from where you can admire the views. Restaurant downstairs offers excellent home-made meals and breakfast, so if you don’t want to, you don’t really need to go anywhere else to eat.

We chose this hotel to our base when hiking and trailrunning in Balkan Mountains, and were really satisfied customers for three days. A brand new Finnish sauna downstairs was a pleasant surprise, it was actually the first sauna since we left Finland behind in August! Perfect way to relax after a long run.

Related post: Hiking in the Balkans

The friendly and helpful owner couple has moved to Apriltsi from Spain, and can serve their customers in Spanish, Bulgarian and Russian. Peter also speaks some English, and helped us to decipher the menu that was partly not translated into English yet. The lack of common language to communicate fluently (our Spanish is unfortunately really rusty at the moment…) was probably the only small downside to this hotel that we can think of. Thank you Peter and Eva once more for your hospitality, hasta la otro dia! 🙂