There's a tradition in Romania: on May Day we go to the seaside. If May 1st ends up next to a weekend, we take an extra day off and treat ourselves to a 4-day vacation. Never mind that nobody in their right mind goes swimming this time of year; it's our tradition and we're having fun, damnit!

In recent years, Bulgarian resorts – with their fancy hotels and smart managers – have been wooing 1st-May-ers away from dull and expensive Romanian offerings, with all-inclusive 3 and 4 day offers. So every year, around May 1st, hordes of Romanian tourists and their cars overrun Bulgarian resorts and roads, with Golden Sands being the favourite destination.

In keeping with this fine tradition, Raluca and I spent a couple of days in said resort. We (gasp) had no GPS navigator, but that was really no problem, because the route was buzzing with cars bearing Romanian license plates. To be fair, road signs were mostly useful; this, together with the asphalt, were a real improvement on the situation a few years ago.

Half of the hotels had not yet opened for the season; the other half were overflowing with Romanian tourists and cars. If you bumped into someone, your best bet was appologising in Romanian; our co-nationals seemed puzzled and/or insulted if addressed in, say, English. Local shopkeepers (Golden Sands has a healthy complement of souvenir shops and restaurants) already knew the basics of Romanian language – hello, rebate, thank you. They also had surprisingly cheap D&G bags and Nike socks.

The single biggest surprise was the free WiFi in the hotel lobby – it was actually free, and working, and reasonably fast. I was able to check Twitter, yay. Relaxation consisted mostly of long walks around the resort, all-you-can-eat meals with desert too tasty to accomodate frugal healthy eating, medicinal quantities of sleep and a 2-part German documentary, translated in French, about the Forbidden City. Also, we set off toward home early, to beat the traffic. Seems to have worked.

All in all, not bad for a 3-day vacation, and surprisingly affordable.