20110830 to Bucharest, Romania   Sunny, very warm.

We rose, finished packing, and went down to breakfast. We paid our tab and moved our stuff to the entry. Our car came promptly at 0800 and took us to Heathrow Terminal 5, arriving at 0900.

Check-in went easily enough and we waited in a lounge because the gate wasn't announced until 1010. The gate was in the main building A, not B or C, so it was easy to find. We waited at the gate for a while before boarding. The plane was full so far as I could tell except for one open seat next to D.

The flight was nice enough as well. Taxi a long distance, take off, cruise, pass out food (we declined), pass out wine (we accepted), cruise, land. Cleared customs quickly and into our pre-arranged car. He took us to the Ramada Plaza and we checked in. We paid him in Euro as requested, but the hotel tells us the locals prefer being paid in dollars or Romanian New Lei. I'll have to drag some dollars out of the suitcase.

The room is quite nice, very spacious after the cozy room in London. We look toward the south and can see the ROMExpo – the local exhibition center, and the World Trade Center.

It's clear and about 88*F here. We're quite a bit south of London, actually only 272 miles from Istanbul to the southeast.

The hotel arranged it so we can stay in this room both nights, even though we are paying for tonight, and the cruise company is paying for tomorrow. Our cruise-mates will be arriving through the day tomorrow; we'll go touring locally.

But right now, we're hungry. The hotel dining room opens in two minutes. The bar is open 24 hours a day; I've not seen that before. The place is absolutely a business-oriented hotel (it has conference rooms for 700).

Off to dinner, then back here to take it easy and listen to Romanian TV or CNN, our two options.

Very few Owen photos.    Some Dolores photos    

20110831  Bucharest, Romania

Up at 0800 local (7 hours ahead of EDT) and to breakfast – a buffet that was quite good.

We decided to do something outdoors before it became too hot (it was 104*F here yesterday), so we caught the hop-on-hop-off City Tour bus and rode around.

We got off at stop 14 to do the Village Museum. Here, the Romanians have gathered houses and churches and other buildings from the various districts of Romania and placed them by district in a large park at lakeside. The different districts and times of building show the various building techniques used and the materials used – wood, clay, stone. I liked the clay house where the clay was internally reinforced with oak beams and other small branches. It was built in the 1800's, so it works.

It started getting hot, so we returned walking to the hotel. Probably walked two miles total. The temperature is 90*F at 1400. We walked into the hotel and straight to the bar, where D had wine & I had a Carlsberg beer. After we cooled off, we cleared the charges on our room so we could now be the guests of Grand Circle Travel.

We saw a GCT representative greet a couple in the lobby who had just flown in. We introduced ourselves to him and were given a brief on the happenings over the next few days. Basically, 1830 for drinks and dinner here in the hotel, then rise at 0630 tomorrow for breakfast, suitcases outside the room by 0800, briefing at 0815, head out on the bus for tour and the cruise ship after that. More later on how it worked out.

The rest of our group of ten is still out on the pre-cruise trip to Transylvania. We'll have to see how they enjoyed that given the recent heat.

More later..... Later:

We loafed around. I couldn't stand it, so I went for a hike around the neighborhood. I found the big building at the head of the main boulevard (Casa Presei Libere – House of the Free Press) in sad shape with steps crumbling and the main floor front completely vacant. Someplace in it (it's big) are the press offices, as they were in communist days when they filled a slightly different function. Link to it here.

I prowled through the Crowne Plaza (nice) and the other Ramada on the way back. Then I stopped for a beer and met some other GCT tourists and talked with them for a while. It happens that there are two GCT groups meeting here. One will go up to Transylvania for a pre-cruise trip, then go to the ship on the Danube and stay on it all the way to Amsterdam. Our group will go to the ship MS Adagio tomorrow while those already on the pre-cruise trip to Transylvania will join us sometime during the day.

The pre-cruise trip includes six people from our group, but not the group leader, Bing and his wife Saidia. They got caught in NYC by hurricane Irene for several days.

All of our group except them went to dinner at 1900 and had a nice dinner. Then Bing & Saidia came in at the end of it off their trip-from-hell. We greeted them and showed them around a little, and bought drinks. They looked like they needed them. They both told horror stories of being in Jamaica, LI, NY during the storm that sounded completely terrible. They finally had to make their own arrangements via Detroit, Toronto and Paris to get here in time for the cruise, and missed the pre-trip entirely.

Then they headed for bed and to get ready for the morning. We went to the room and are packing and doing things like composing this note.

None of us have heard from the Transylvania group, so we can only assume they're doing well.

Owen’s photos      Dolores photos